Overall, during the first lockdown, around 62,000 fewer patients were operated on in Wales, compared with the same period the previous year—62,000 people left in pain and suffering with no end in sight. And people haven't stopped getting sick. Heart disease, dementia and cancer just haven't gone away. COVID-19 isn't Wales's biggest killer. In fact, it's, ironically, the nineteenth most common cause of death in Wales. So, this pandemic will result in a lot of indirect deaths because our health service is not running at the capacity it should. Estimates put NHS services running at around half of their previous capacity overall, and that before this winter, which is likely to be a very bad one, given that south Wales is home to some of the highest COVID-19 infection rates in the UK.

This pandemic has highlighted the fragility of our NHS. We went into lockdown in March in order to build up our capacity in the health service, yet, eight months later, we have just come out of another lockdown, but our NHS is still in danger of being overwhelmed, according to the Welsh Government. At the start of this pandemic, field hospitals were set up to expand NHS bed capacity, and in total nearly 10,000 additional beds were created—almost the exact number of beds our NHS has lost since 1990.

Before this pandemic hit our shores, the NHS was operating at a bed occupancy rate of almost 90 per cent. We had no spare capacity, which is why we went into lockdown and why all non-emergency treatment was halted. What I find bizarre, however, was that the Welsh Government opted to close half of the field hospital beds at the end of the summer, because the additional capacity was barely used. It was barely used, because the NHS stopped all routine treatment, screening services halted and health prevention measures ceased. We knew, back in April, early May, that we had dodged a bullet, mostly because this coronavirus doesn't spread as well outdoors, and we were warned that autumn and winter would be much, much worse as people moved activity indoors. So, why, then, did we close nearly 5,000 hospital beds—beds that were set up to deal with COVID patients, beds that should have freed up hospitals to deal with the tens of thousands of patients desperate for treatment? But routine treatments didn't start, in many cases, until mid September, and this meant the extra capacity was largely unused, leading Welsh Government to conclude that it was unneeded. It is needed. It's badly needed.

So, we need to continue non-emergency treatment now, before it becomes an emergency. The field hospitals should be dedicated to treating patients who test positive for infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, leaving the rest of the NHS free to deal with non-COVID treatments, and working to reduce the backlog of treatments also—a backlog that continues to grow as the pandemic persists. These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; these are people who continue to wait, living in pain, discomfort—patients whose conditions will continue to deteriorate. Perhaps they will worsen to such an extent that they require ongoing treatment—additional cost to the NHS, but, more importantly, impacting the lives and livelihoods of those patients and their families.

So, we were caught unawares by coronavirus in the beginning, but we have had some time to prepare. And the virus is not going away any time soon, but we can't let it decimate our health and social care services. We can't allow people to die because they aren't getting treated due to resources being focused on the pandemic. We can't add to the suffering of patients because of the threat of COVID-19. Our citizens deserve better. Our NHS can't continually be put on hold because of the pandemic. We have to continue treating Welsh patients throughout this second wave, taking steps to tackle the backlog of treatments. We need to expand the field hospitals once more, dedicating them to treating COVID-positive patients, and ramp up testing to ensure same-day turnaround and the ability to test all those needing treatment. That way, we have a real firebreak in place to allow NHS treatments to continue, saving lives and ending suffering by tackling waiting times for treatment. Diolch yn fawr.