Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:54 pm on 12 January 2021.
Thank you for the questions. To be fair, I think the question about the phase 2 roll-out was confused at the start, and in terms of the phase 2 roll-out and the question about school staff, of course I'm sympathetic to a range of occupational groups who are working as key workers to keep all of us safe. In particular whilst we're staying at home, we're relying on groups of people to maintain some sense of normality in these extraordinary times. I also have sympathy for people who work in the police and other services, but the priority list is all about how we save lives.
When it comes to phase 2, as I made clear in my statement, we don't yet have advice from the JCVI or our chief medical officers on prioritisation within that second phase. And I will be interested in the evidence on how we can avoid the greatest harm, how we can go as quickly as possible to protect the adult population. But to give you an idea of the sort of differential rate that we are dealing with, the deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, indicated to Ministers across the four nations in a call not that long ago that 43 vaccinations of care home residents would probably save one life, about 100 vaccinations of the over-80s will save one life; to save one life of a teacher who is under 30 without additional vulnerabilities, you need to vaccinate 62,000 people. So, it really does reiterate why we've got prioritisation of the groups we currently have. And when we get into the second phase, we can be confident that we are vaccinating people where there is still a risk, but the risk is much lower. And so that's why we have our priority list approach and that's why we're taking the approach of prioritisation for staff within that.