Health Protection Measures in Blaenau Gwent

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:17 pm on 2 December 2020.

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Photo of Alun Davies Alun Davies Labour 2:17, 2 December 2020

I'm grateful to you for that, Minister, and I join the tone of exchanges this afternoon, where we all welcome the news about the vaccine being made available, and we look forward to that radically changing the health situation in Blaenau Gwent and elsewhere. But in the meantime, of course, today we've seen numbers of the infection that demonstrate that Blaenau Gwent is again near the top of these rates in Wales. And I recognise what the Government is doing in terms of regulations, and we debated that yesterday; we'll debate it again next week. But the regulations alone I don't believe are going to be sufficient to deliver the sort of reduction in numbers that we require and we need in Blaenau Gwent to keep people safe.

And I'd like to ask the Minister what consideration he is giving to the sort of mass testing that we're seeing across our county borders in Cynon and in Merthyr, and also greater enforcement. I think one of the frustrations that's come through over recent days is that people are working really, really hard to stay within the regulations, to ensure that they're keeping people safe, but that enforcement isn't taking place in a sufficiently robust way to ensure that everybody does that. So, what can the Welsh Government do to ensure that we have a more holistic approach to policy in places like Blaenau Gwent?