Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 8 December 2020.
Llywydd, let me end this part of our proceedings by agreeing with the leader of the opposition. This is a moment where hope is really important to people. This has been such a long and difficult year in the lives of so many people here in Wales, and today, when the vaccine is being used for the first time, it does give us that glimmer of light at the end of what is still a long tunnel in front of us. The fact that we have been able to agree all this on a four-nation basis is something that I am very keen to welcome. I was very pleased to be part of the agreement on how the vaccine should be distributed. I know my colleague Vaughan Gething has met the other health Ministers on a weekly basis right through November and met again yesterday to make sure that we have a common sense of what this vaccine can do, how it can best be deployed. And the 40,000 doses that we're getting from the first batch of the vaccine is our population share of it.
Now, we've been part of planning on this, Llywydd, since June of this year, when the first all-Wales programme board was set up for vaccination, and we are, I believe, as well prepared for it as we could be. I agree that, as the volume of vaccination grows, we will need to draw more people into the pool of people able to carry out vaccination. All health boards have plans to recruit people into that pool to make sure that they are properly trained, they're properly accredited, and that their work is supervised by experienced clinicians. As it happens, I also know that my colleague the health Minister is meeting Community Pharmacy Wales next week, so there will definitely be opportunities to talk about the contribution that community pharmacy can make in this field. But the level of preparation we have in Wales, the commitment that has been shown by existing staff who've come forward to offer their services as vaccinators, I think can add to that sense of hope that we can offer people here in Wales today that next year will be a different year to the one that we've all experienced in 2020.