3. What is the Welsh Government doing to mitigate the impact of coronavirus on people's health in the Rhondda? OQ55862

Can I thank Leanne Wood for that question, Llywydd? We work with partners in employment, mental health, non-coronavirus health needs and in combatting coronavirus itself, to mitigate all the health harms in the lives of people in the Rhondda. In recent days, both incidence and positivity rates in the area have fallen as a result of the combined efforts of local services and local people.

The coronavirus isolation scheme has finally opened after much delay, but it will not provide much comfort for the parents of children who have to self-isolate. Only people formally told to isolate by the track and trace teams are eligible for payment, and this is no good for a parent without childcare who has to take time off work to look after a child who has been ordered to stay at home. There is also no right of appeal if an application is refused. Given the discretionary assistance fund is usually only applicable to people without savings and facing destitution, and that very few employers give paid leave to people to look after children, many parents will be facing poverty by the inflexibility of the coronavirus self-isolation scheme as it is applied in Wales. I keep arguing, First Minister, that you need to make it as easy as possible to enable people to self-isolate, so how are you going to remedy this particular problem?

Well, Llywydd, I'm happy to look at the points that the Member has raised, of course, and if there are things that we can do that will make the scheme fit better with individual circumstances of the sort she described, then I'm very happy that we should do so. We've put £5 million further into the discretionary assistance fund here in Wales, to allow it to be able to respond to the coronvirus-induced difficulties that families in Wales experience, and we have already made thousands of payments through that fund and millions of pounds have been allocated to families in Wales to help with coronavirus-related needs. That will now include the needs of families who need to self-isolate. The word 'discretion' in the discretionary assistance fund is there for a reason. It is there to enable the decision makers to take into account the specific circumstances of individuals and families who make an application to that fund. So, it is not a rigid, rule-based system. It operates within a framework that is fair to people and then allows decision makers to exercise their discretion so that the unique set of circumstances in front of them can be properly attended to. If there is more that we can do as experience of the £500 emerges, and particularly if we need to fine-tune it to make sure that the needs of children are taken into account, then I'm happy to say to the Member that I'm very willing to do so.

First Minister, many areas in the former south Wales coalfield, like the Rhondda, have had a very high level of infection and the population there will be sick for some time to come with long COVID and other related problems afterwards. I'm particularly concerned about how this is going to be managed. What health services and clinics will be available for people, especially if it reduces their ability to hold down a job or to seek a job, given the economic inactivity that areas like the Rhondda currently suffer?

Those are very important points that the Member makes. He's absolutely right that, in the early months of coronavirus, people living in deprived communities experienced mortality rates almost double those in less deprived areas, and we certainly saw the effect of that in the Rhondda Cynon Taf local authority area. The first thing that we have to do, Llywydd, is to get on top of the impact that the current second wave is having on our hospital services, because at the moment, our hospitals are having to deal with the immediate crisis of more people coming through the door for this reason, and that, inevitably, has an impact on their ability to go on providing other services such as the rehabilitation services to which David Melding referred. I know that he will be glad to have seen the fall in the incidence rate in RCT over the last seven days. A week ago, it was 478 per 100,000 in the population; today, it's 259. The positivity rate has fallen from over 25 per cent to 18 per cent. And, in the last couple of days, in hospitals in the RCT area, there are now 14 confirmed cases in critical care—that's the lowest since 27 October. There are 206 confirmed cases in other acute beds in the Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board area—that's 50 lower than the same day last week and 64 lower than the highest point, which was on 3 November. And it's provided we can go on bearing down on the current flare up of numbers that the health board will then have the capacity to be able to attend to the longer-term consequences. I agree with the point that David Melding was making that if you have an older, sicker, poorer population, then those long-term impacts are likely to be more profound.