Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:29 pm on 8 December 2020.
Llywydd, I thank Dawn Bowden for that. Can I, as well, thank all those who've been involved in that fantastic effort in Merthyr on the mass testing front, but also this afternoon, Llywydd, particularly, to thank all those people in our health service who have been part of the vaccination programme? The huge work that has gone on very rapidly over recent weeks to provide the logistical support, the transport, the storage, the onward provision of the vaccine, and today we see the fruits of that and I'm sure everybody in the Chamber and remotely today would want to thank those who've made that possible.
I thank Dawn Bowden for raising that important point about the inverse care law. She will know that vaccination is one of the relatively rare parts of the health world that has the opposite characteristics to the inverse care law. I remember when I was the health Minister, and the Member represented workers in the health service, we introduced the HPV vaccine for young women aged 14 and above. The highest take-up in the whole of Wales was in Merthyr Tydfil and the lowest take-up of all was in Monmouthshire. And, strangely, those figures persist to today. Monmouthshire has a take-up of HPV of 77 per cent and Cwm Taf Morgannwg has a 91 per cent take-up. So, vaccination is one of those relatively rare things where the inverse care law doesn't seem to apply. It's really important it doesn't apply in relation to this vaccine. The fact that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation schedule for the roll-out of the vaccine focuses on age and clinical vulnerability means, I think, that its impact will most be felt most quickly in those parts of Wales where we have higher concentrations of older, poorer and sicker populations. And that means, I hope, that we will see greater numbers of those populations, including in the constituency represented by Dawn Bowden—that they will see the benefit of this vaccine first. And, given the characteristics, and given the advice of the JCVI, so they should.