Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 20 January 2021.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 1:51, 20 January 2021

Well, of course we'll consider the developing evidence base on the effectiveness and characteristics of vaccines and the threats that we're looking to combat. I think going beyond that is rather unhelpful and speculative, because we need to understand the confirmed evidence, rather than what may or may not be developing. There is always the potential for different things to happen at various points in time. I'm confident, though, that the flexibility and the can-do attitude that our NHS has shown throughout this crisis is something that will also help us with future events, as well.

It's also worth pointing out, I think, that I do think we should look forward to a more optimistic end to 2021 than the year we've just gone through, but that doesn't mean that the year will be risk-free. Even as we vaccinate the adult population, I don't think people can look forward to going back to entirely the way things were at this point in January 2020. I think the challenge is that we're going to be living with COVID for some time. Once we have protections from the vaccine, we'll have the changes that you and I would see every year with the flu, for example, where different strains emerge and there's a need to consider how we best protect people and what we need to build in as a regular part of our infrastructure, and that will, of course, also feature in how we deal with new and emerging threats, whether they're from a different strain of COVID or, indeed, other healthcare threats, as well.