Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 10 November 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:12, 10 November 2020

Well, Llywydd, I completely disagree with the Member, because I think her suggestion is that we have somehow over-prioritised the treatment of coronavirus patients here in Wales. Last week, Public Health Wales reported that the two-thousandth patient in Wales to die from coronavirus was being reported in their statistics. I don't think those people or their families would agree with Mandy Jones that somehow we should have neglected the care of coronavirus patients in order to care for others. And she seems to deny the fact that there is a choice that has to be made here, because the health service cannot simply manage to do everything we are asking of it in a global pandemic and carry on as though the global pandemic were not taking place. It's very easy, where she sits, to think that easy choices of that sort can be made. They simply don't exist in the real world. They simply don't exist in the lives of the staff that we rely on to provide these services. The single biggest contribution that can be made to making sure that non-coronavirus care can be continued is to take coronavirus seriously. That's what she fails to do and she's doing it again this afternoon.