Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 8 December 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:46, 8 December 2020

Llywydd, I'm very happy to ask the technical advisory group to do that. They, in any case, constantly update their advice based on emerging evidence, and particularly emerging evidence that is reported in reputable scientific journals of the sort to which Adam Price referred. We have our mass testing programme still going ahead in Merthyr Tydfil, expanded, as the Member will know, into the Cynon Valley over the weekend; we're learning a lot ourselves from doing it. I think it's quite important, Llywydd, to make a distinction between those lateral flow devices that we are using, which, essentially, pick up people who are infectious to others. So, they pick up people a couple of days before symptoms begin, and they continue to pick up people who are infectious for about five days or so beyond that. The PCR tests pick up not people who are infectious, but people who are both infectious and infected, and you can be infected for up to eight weeks beyond the point at which you were infectious to anybody else. PCR tests pick up the very last remnants of coronavirus that still may be circulating in somebody's system. So, it's important to be clear about what the purpose of the test is. I remain sure, myself, that the lateral flow devices that we are using in Wales have a part to play, provided it is carefully understood and properly calibrated.