5. What further steps will the Welsh Government take to combat the harms resulting from COVID-19 in Newport? OQ55875

The direct harms from COVID-19 in Newport are best addressed through measures we can take together to reduce contact with others, travel only when necessary, and work from home as much as possible. The Welsh Government plans actively for new vaccination and mass testing possibilities, including their availability to Newport citizens.

First Minister, I had a look around the new Aneurin Bevan University Health Board Grange hospital last week. It officially opened today, but its birthing centre had already seen its first delivery—a baby girl, fittingly born two days ago, on Aneurin Bevan's birthday. Will you agree with me that this state-of-the-art facility is a very welcome addition to NHS capacity to serve generations to come, as well as having a vital role to help combat COVID-19? And in assisting the front-line NHS effort against the virus, will you carefully consider enhanced testing for asymptomatic domiciliary care staff and enhanced testing in our secondary schools, which would also reduce lost school time?

Well, can I thank John Griffiths for that question, Llywydd, and particularly for what he said at the start? I'd very much like to congratulate—and I'm sure Members here would—Poppy and her parents. The first child to be born at the new hospital, and to be born on Aneurin Bevan's birthday—what a fantastic start for the hospital and for that family, and it's a sign of what is to come from that state-of-the-art hospital in scale, size and purpose, the single most important hospital since the university hospital here in Cardiff was opened at the beginning of the 1970s.

It will do a very, very important job over this winter, in helping us to deal with the coronavirus crisis, with the hundreds of extra beds that it provides in that part of Wales, but in the longer run, in fulfilling the Gwent Clinical Futures vision, which I know John Griffiths, as the local Member, will have been much involved in, nearly a decade ago, when that was being planned and produced. It's a very proud moment, I think, for us here in Wales to have seen that facility open ahead of time and available to that local population.

It will be an important part, Llywydd, of the way in which that facility and health services more generally in the Gwent area will be able to develop over this winter by using some of the new mass testing possibilities. As in so much of coronavirus, this is happening very rapidly around us all the time, and we're likely to have thousands of these lateral-flow tests available to us in Wales every day in the very near future, and that will give us new possibilities in asymptomatic testing of front-line workers, and we may be able to do more to allow children who, at the moment, have to go home if a single child is found to have coronavirus in a school—we may be able to deploy them to allow those children to return more rapidly to education. So, there's a lot of work going on with our colleagues in the health service and others to make sure that this new possibility is put to work in those parts of Welsh society where it has the most impact, and, Llywydd, we've talked previously on the floor of the Senedd here about using them to enable visits to care homes, one of the really, really difficult issues that families have had to face over this extraordinary period. 

First Minister, we'd also, on these benches, like to extend our congratulations to—I believe it's baby Poppy's parents and also welcome the hospital, which, of course, is hugely beneficial to all my constituents across South Wales East. There have been many concerns that people have been inboxing me about recently, because doctors have come out and said that they're concerned about the staffing levels in the new hospital for when it's opening. How can you reassure this floor today, First Minister, that there will be enough staff to cope with the demand when the hospital opens its doors? Thank you.

Llywydd, I thank Laura Anne Jones for what she said originally. Of course, the hospital has already opened its doors. It's been receiving patients for some days now. I saw an exchange of correspondence between the medical director and one doctor employed by the health board that I think set out very clearly the way in which staffing arrangements have been agreed, agreed with clinicians, agreed with the nursing leadership in the health board. Those staffing arrangements have been put in place. It's not to say for a moment, Llywydd, that the system is not under pressure. The health service is under pressure absolutely everywhere right across the United Kingdom, and most of Europe as well, and that is certainly true here in Wales. But working within those pressures, plans have been drawn up, they've been agreed with the people who need to operate them, and they are being put in place as this hospital receives its first patients.