The COVID-19 Pandemic

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 12 January 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:32, 12 January 2021

Llywydd, I thank the Member for his recognition of the scale of the effort that is needed and is being made to roll out the vaccination programme on the size and scale that is necessary here in Wales, and for his recognition of the enormous pressure that the health service is currently operating under while it rolls out the vaccination programme.

My view is that vaccination is intimately connected with everything else that the health service seeks to do—that you cannot make decisions in one part of the NHS's responsibility severed off from everything else. Much better, I believe, to allow the health Minister, who is intimately acquainted with everything that has happened in the last 10 months with the coronavirus effort of the health service, including vaccination, to be in charge of that effort. I think that works better than trying to hand over just part of what the NHS has to do to one other person, inevitably creating new barriers and borderlines, and so on. Our health Minister has worked absolutely tirelessly over the last 10 months. He is in the best position to make sure that everything we need to do in vaccination is taken forward in line with the plan that was published yesterday.