Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 20 January 2021.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 1:50, 20 January 2021

(Translated)

That doesn't answer my question. I wasn't asking whether you would change policy, I was asking if you had the capacity within your systems to take a new path if necessary and what preparations are being made for that.

If I may move on, clearly, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine that has been favoured, because it is more flexible; it's easier to store and to transport and so on and so forth. But, as evidence reaches us, from Israel particularly, in terms of how the virus is transferred by those people who have been vaccinated, it does appear possible—and this is not a rhetorical issue, because we need to make preparations for all eventualities—that only the Pfizer vaccine would provide this improvement in terms of transmission. Now, this is a very new kind of vaccination. This new mRNA technology is likely to be a prominent part of dealing with future pandemics. We will need infrastructure in place that would allow the roll-out of these new mRNA vaccines very quickly and the need to keep them cold, and so on. In the midst of this pandemic, does the Government have its eye on developing that kind of infrastructure for the future, as well as seeing how quickly it can be rolled out for the problem that we are currently facing?