Part of 4. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 4:17 pm on 11 November 2020.
We have yet to conclude our discussions with primary care about the delivery of any vaccine, and again it's important to remember 'any vaccine', because there are other candidates, not just the Pfizer candidate, that again, at this point in time, is not approved. And that will affect how we would deliver those vaccines, because my recollection is that this vaccine would need to be stored at below -75 degrees centigrade and there are very few facilities able to do that. You don't find facilities like that in every general practice or in every community health centre. So, we've got to think about a different model and an ability to be able to distribute the vaccine depending on its characteristics, and that will then help to determine who delivers that and where they deliver that.
So, there's a range of things to work through and we'll then have to take a balanced view. If there is a vaccine that is effective and will avoid the significant amounts of harm that we have already seen coronavirus cause, and which it could add to significantly through this winter, we need to make a balanced judgment about offering that vaccine and offering it to the public with those at-risk groups coming first, and to then understand the impact of that on other health and care services. So, that's why it's so important not to get lost in wanting to have a hard-and-fast, detailed plan now for a vaccine that we don't yet have available, and each vaccine will bring different challenges as well, of course, as different opportunities to help protect the public.