1. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of how Aneurin Bevan University Health Board has dealt with COVID-19? OQ56202

Llywydd, services in the board’s area continue to be under significant pressure as reductions in community transmission are only slowly being felt in hospitals. I'm sure we are all grateful for the dedication of the board's staff as they strive to deliver the best possible care to their patients.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. This winter has been one of the hardest periods anyone can remember for our NHS. Staff numbers have been hit hard, patient numbers have been high, and the pressure and stresses on our front-line staff have been immense. Despite all of this, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board have put in place a mass vaccination programme that is accelerating at pace, whilst also adapting their practices and services. One of these adaptations has been to offer local residents alternatives to attending A&E departments, This has helped to relieve some of the pressure on the system and helped keep patients and staff as safe as possible. The health board and staff are doing incredible work under extreme circumstances. Will the First Minister welcome the actions that are being taken in Aneurin Bevan health board area and ensure the Welsh Government continues to provide all the support it can to help support our staff and keep us safe?

Llywydd, I thank Jayne Bryant very much for that supplementary question. Of course, I do very much welcome all the efforts that are made by our staff in Aneurin Bevan, and across Wales, under the extraordinary pressures that they have faced now for nearly a full 12 months. And, of course, Jayne Bryant is right—the latest challenge is that of vaccination. Fifty thousand vaccines now delivered in the Aneurin Bevan area, 69 of the 74 GP practices in the area delivering the vaccine last week, and that of course is only one of the many challenges they are facing. The board delivered 19,000 tests to residents in the Aneurin Bevan health board area last week as well, and yet, as Jayne Bryant says, Llywydd, the board goes on innovating, and its latest innovation, of their contact first pilot, I think is demonstrating a real success. 

We understand the anxiety that people feel about coming into emergency departments at a time when coronavirus is in such circulation. Allowing people to phone first, to have that conversation, and then to be directed to the part of the service that is best suited to helping them is an advantage to the user, but it's an advantage to the service as well. And, Llywydd, as Jayne Bryant suggested, of those people who phoned the service in the two weeks at the end of December, 81 per cent of them did not need to attend an emergency department, 36 per cent of callers were successfully directed to a minor injuries unit, 32 per cent were directed to an urgent primary care centre in the board's area. And I think those are remarkable figures and demonstrate not simply the amazing efforts that staff are making, but their capacity to go on innovating and responding to new circumstances even under the pressures that the board is facing. 

I, too, would like to extend my thanks to everyone at the Aneurin Bevan health board for the tremendous work they're doing in delivering the vaccine, but also the extraordinary reactive ways, as the First Minister has just said, that they've handled this pandemic. As you know, First Minister, the Abergavenny centre in Monmouthshire delivers the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine only a couple of days a week, although Monmouthshire County Council and GP practices, who have all been incredible during this delivery of the vaccine, have offered to set up another centre. It would seem to me to make sense that either the Abergavenny vaccination centre becomes a Pfizer vaccination centre, so that it could operate seven days a week like Cwmbran and Newport are just about to, or that another Pfizer delivery centre is established in Monmouthshire, ensuring faster roll-out of the vaccine. I'd just appreciate your thoughts on that, First Minister. 

I thank Laura Anne Jones for those suggestions, which I'm sure the board will know about, and I'm sure that they will be putting that into their thinking. The picture, as Laura Anne Jones acknowledged, is changing all the time. Boards are developing new centres and new GPs are coming on stream. It's an effort to maximise the number of people on the ground able to offer vaccination, but it's also an effort to try to make sure that those possibilities are as close to people's homes and as convenient for them as possible. I think, two weeks ago, Llywydd, I said in these questions that we hoped to have 250 GP practices involved in vaccination by the end of the month; we've got 330 nearly by now, so we've well exceeded what we had expected. That's part of the changing pattern that Laura Anne Jones referred to. I'm sure the board will have heard what she said and will take that into account as they plan to provide even more opportunities for vaccination, and to do it as conveniently as possible for the people that the Member represents.

I'd echo the points made about the bravery and dedication of the Aneurin Bevan health board staff—they are a credit to our communities. I wanted to raise an issue about administering the vaccine in the area, please. Some constituents have got in touch with me because they are caring for an elderly relative, and the elderly relative has been called to get the vaccine but they as a carer have not. Now, I appreciate that this is something that is happening across Wales and not just in our health board area, but I think it does get to the heart of the problem, First Minister, that, whilst paid care workers are in the same priority group as those over 80, unpaid carers are not, and they are in close physical proximity to those they're caring for. So, surely it would make sense for them to receive the vaccine at the same time, to protect their vulnerable relatives. So, First Minister, could I ask if you would consider making this change to the vaccine roll-out in the area so that unpaid carers are given priority too?

Well, Llywydd, those are important points, and they would have been very carefully considered by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation in its prioritisation of groups. The Member will know that unpaid carers are included in priority group 6. So, they're not in the first four priority groups that we are focusing on at the moment, but they will be in the next set of priority groups. We have to abide by the JCVI's prioritisation list. There are many cases that people can make individually for why that list should be amended, but my view is—and it's the view of all First Ministers, and the Prime Minister, across the country—we have to stick to the advice that the JCVI has provided to us. Unpaid carers will be included in that sixth group and, therefore, in the next phase of vaccination. We're working hard to make sure that people who are unpaid carers will be able to make themselves known, so that they can get vaccination in that new list. We amended the advice on the Welsh Government's website to make sure that unpaid carers knew that priority group 6 included them. And, in line with what the JCVI has told us, we will come to unpaid carers once the first four groups are concluded and we're able to move into the next tranche.

I think we all appreciate the extraordinary work that the staff in Aneurin Bevan and elsewhere are doing with the vaccination. First Minister, I've had a number of constituents who've come to me saying that relatives who are over 80, or indeed, in some cases, in care homes, are yet to have their vaccination in the Aneurin Bevan area, yet they have other family, over the border in Gloucestershire, and, five days ago, they announced there they'd already vaccinated 85 per cent of the over-85s. Your health Minister said that we would get to that in Wales, and I hope also in Aneurin Bevan, to 70 per cent at least by the end of the weekend just gone. Can you confirm if that's happened, and, if not, when it will, and when we can hope to get to those 85 per cent plus levels of vaccination of that group that we're seeing over the border?

Llywydd, our ambition is to vaccinate all people—or offer vaccination to all people in those top 4 groups by the middle of February. That continues to be our ambition. The aim of getting 70 per cent of the 80-plus age range was affected over the weekend by the adverse weather. We know that a large number of people aged over 80 did not feel that it was safe for them to leave their homes in the snow and, indeed, yesterday morning in the very cold and icy conditions, and weren't able to attend appointments at GP clinics or in mass vaccination centres. All of those people will have been offered another opportunity for vaccination by the end of Wednesday of this week. So, we will very rapidly make up for that number. The figures of people being offered vaccination and able to take it up in Wales over the last week have been remarkable, and that should give us all confidence that we will have offered vaccination to everyone in that group in line with the ambition that we set out at the outset.