Infectious Diseases

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:05 pm on 12 January 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:05, 12 January 2021

I believe I did, Llywydd, although, as you said, it was a bit of a struggle to hear the beginning part. I have heard the Member previously somehow suggest that we are making a fuss about nothing when it comes to coronavirus, that there have been other diseases in other times that we have managed to survive. I honestly fail to understand what he is unable to grasp about this killer disease, which has caused the deaths of thousands of people here now in Wales, and where we are seeing at this point, in this wave of the virus, even more people dying, week by week.

It does absolutely nobody any favours at all to act as though this were not the public health crisis that it is. Over a third of beds in Welsh hospitals today are occupied by people who are so ill with coronavirus that they need the care of a hospital setting. We have almost as many people in critical care today because of coronavirus as at any point in the progress of this disease. Where David Rowlands is right is to say that the health service is trying to go on doing all of the other things that we need it to do. So, there are as many people in critical care beds for other reasons as there are for coronavirus.

But, in order for the health service to be able to get back to dealing, in the way we would all like to see, with all of the other health needs that there are here in Wales, every one of us has to do everything that we can to bear down on the current upswing in the virus here in Wales. Talking about coronavirus as though it were not the serious threat that it is simply undermines, rather than supports, the great national effort that others are making.