3. Will the Minister make a statement on the number of patients in South Wales East waiting more than 36 weeks for treatment from their referral? OQ56152

Thank you. During the pandemic, the available capacity has reduced to enable appropriate social distancing and improved infection-prevention and control measures to be implemented. As I've stated previously on a number of occasions, these measures, and increased personal protective equipment usage and requirements, have significantly reduced throughput in our NHS. Health boards have concentrated on treating the most urgent patients and, unfortunately, this has resulted in significantly longer waits for some patients.

Thank you, Minister. According to research by the South Wales Argus, over 32,000 patients had waited beyond the 36-week period in Gwent up to October, which was the latest date when they had figures available. One of the key reasons for the delays is that not enough staff are available due to being off sick or self-isolating.

According to the British Medical Association, the Welsh Government recently changed its policy for vaccinating NHS staff, forcing many to wait 12 weeks for their second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. This goes against the World Health Organization advice of giving it within three weeks, and certainly no longer than six weeks. This means that doctors who volunteered to work on the front line don't feel safe to do so until they know that they're fully inoculated.

Huw Edwards reported yesterday that a senior clinician suggested it could be deemed a criminal act if a staff member died due to being infected while on duty between receiving their first and second dose. I cannot understate how strongly doctors feel about this. Will the Minister, therefore, overturn this policy and resume giving front-line health workers their second dose within three weeks, in order to protect our front-line workers and allow them to return to work to keep us safe and sound?

I understand there's real anxiety from everyone who's a front-line health and care worker, but I really don't think it was Huw Edwards's finest hour to promote on social media that incendiary comment that doesn't actually have a basis, I think, in the public health advice we've received and are following.

It might be helpful for me to explain to the Member how we get to this point again. So, I explained earlier that vaccines are only approved when the independent regulator approves their use. The advice we are following, then, on the deployment of those vaccines has to comply with the conditions they've imposed. It also, then, goes through the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to give advice to all four Governments in the UK about how to make the best use of those vaccines.

Their advice, which has been endorsed by all four chief medical officers in the UK, including our own chief medical officer, Frank Atherton, of course, is that the right thing to do is to provide the protection the vaccine offers to as many people with the first dose as quickly as possible and to think about it in these ways: if you have two doses of the vaccine available and you have two doctors or two nurses, you could choose to give both of those doses, within an interval, to one doctor or one nurse, and then the other one would have to wait until more supplies are available much later on. So, that person would be working without any protection. The good news is that the two vaccines we have available provide a high level of protection with their first dose. So, you have a choice between providing as many people as possible with good protection as quickly and as broadly as possible, or you can provide excellent protection and then leave other people bearing a different risk in having no protection at all. I think it's very easy to understand public health advice—endorsed by Public Health Wales too. That's the advice I have received as Minister.

It's also been very clear that not following that advice would mean not only that I would turn over the direct advice of the chief medical officer and the direct advice of the JCVI, I'd be doing that on a basis where the understanding is, and the advice I've been given, that that would lead to hundreds of avoidable deaths. So, we're doing the right thing in terms of the public health advice we've received, and made that clear on many occasions. And it's the advice that my decision is to follow, just as, indeed, an Ulster Unionist health Minister has done in Northern Ireland, a Scottish Nationalist Party health Minister in Scotland, and a Conservative health Minister in England. This is straightforward public health advice, and it's the way we're going to roll out this programme to protect as many people as possible, including those NHS and social care staff working on the front line, and I'm tremendously grateful for all they've done for us and they will continue to do as this crisis unfolds and eventually ends.

In terms of the ability to deal with the coronavirus in south-east Wales, I wonder if you could update us, Minister, on the Grange University Hospital and the role of that in providing treatment for those suffering from COVID-19.

In direct conversations I've had with the health board—and I'm sure the Member has engaged in the regular briefings that the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board provides—the provision and the early completion of the Grange hospital is a key part of the practical COVID response. It allows for much easier and greater isolation, because of the single rooms that are provided throughout the facility. It allows much greater space than the former infrastructure that existed in the Royal Gwent, and the hospital in Abergavenny that I know that many of the Member's constituents will have gone to, and it's where, of course, my own father passed away as well. So, this isn't to criticise those hospitals or that infrastructure—it's a recognition that it needed to be updated. That's why the Member, and indeed other Members from across the political spectrum, including, of course, Lynne Neagle—I should mention her—were campaigning for the completion of the Clinical Futures vision, with the Grange at its centre. We didn't know at the time that I made that choice to go ahead with that hospital within this term that it would play such a key part in the pandemic response. It's also, of course, provided a much better place for emergency care to be delivered as well. So, I think that the decision to complete the Grange University Hospital, to accelerate its completion, has already stood the test of time, and I'm sure, as you do, if you listen to the voices of staff who work in that hospital, then they will say it has been a real benefit to them and the people they serve and care for to have it as part of our healthcare infrastructure.