7. Will the Minister make a statement on the vaccine roll-out in Carmarthenshire? OQ56146

Thank you. On 11 January, I published the national vaccination plan, reflecting months of detailed NHS planning. The strategy set out a number of key milestones that the Member will be familiar with. Hywel Dda health board, which serve the population of Carmarthenshire, confirm that all general practices have signed up, and are increasing their mass vaccination centres from two overall to at least one per county.

I'm grateful to the Minister for his answer, and I'm very grateful to the staff for all that they are achieving in getting patients vaccinated. But I've received correspondence from the families of two patients over the age of 90 in Llanelli and one patient over the age of 90 in Llangennech, who, as yet, haven't heard from the NHS as to when they will get vaccinated. Now, obviously, these patients are in the very vulnerable age group, and given that this is more than one, I do have a concern that there may be an issue with the health board's communication with patients in this group. May I ask the Minister just to ask his officials to reassure themselves that Hywel Dda is effectively communicating? Because if these patients need to wait and there's a good reason why they need to wait, it's very important—I'm sure he would agree with me—that they and their families understand the situation and understand when they are likely to receive the vaccine.

I think it's fair to say there will be some people who won't have heard yet, because the NHS will be contacting more and more of those people progressively through not just this week, but the next week as well. And it's the case that, in other parts of the UK, there'll be people who won't have heard and people who won't have been invited to an appointment yet, including the over-80s and in some parts in care homes too. In Wales, I expect this week to make really significant progress on care home residents and the over-80s. You may well still, as indeed may other Members, get contact from people on Monday who say that they still haven't had their appointment, but I am confident that the pace will increase further this week. I am confident that more and more of our over-80s will receive their vaccines this week or will receive their appointment letters this week.

Powys have managed to act probably faster than any other health board in getting through their population, and that's why they're able to already start issuing invite letters to over-70s within that county. I expect every health board to rapidly get to that position over the next week or so. So, your constituents should either have received their jab or have received an invite letter in the coming days. I'll report openly about where we are with the overall pace of the programme once more, and I do just want to say that I think that Hywel Dda, throughout the whole of the COVID crisis, deserves a great deal of credit for the way they've organised themselves, the way they've gathered their staff and partners together, and I think they deserve a tremendous amount of praise. I hope that the public will not just reflect on that, but have some confidence that our NHS won't leave people behind. We know what we have to do to protect people, and the vaccination programme remains our No. 1 priority.

Thank you, Minister.