Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 3:26 pm on 9 February 2021.
Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, I thank Jack Sargeant for an opportunity for the Senedd to talk about what everybody else in Wales is talking about, and that is the astonishing success of our national health service and those other public sector workers, the local government officers, who have helped us to open up mass vaccination centres, who found the desks, who found the chairs, who found the rooms; those volunteers who welcomed people on arrival; those members of the armed forces in every part of Wales are part of that enormous vaccination effort.
And Dirprwy Lywydd, it's right to put on record this afternoon. Just think of the last weekend. On Friday, we went through the 0.5 million barrier in terms of the number of people vaccinated in Wales. On Friday and Saturday, we vaccinated 1 per cent of the whole of the population of Wales on both days. And on Monday, we went through 600,000 people who've now successfully been vaccinated. It is an enormous tribute, at a time, as Jack Sargeant said, Dirprwy Lywydd, when our health workers are doing all the other things that we ask of them, including that flu vaccination programme, which, by the way, has once again been an outstanding success in north Wales in particular, and in the Member's constituency, we have some of the best flu-uptake figures anywhere in Wales. To do all of that at the same time while responding to winter pressures, while doing all the other things that Andrew R.T. Davies talked to me about, it's a remarkable effort, and we owe those people an enormous debt of gratitude, and I'm very glad to have the chance to put that on the record here this afternoon.
And we will, Dirprwy Lywydd, be asking even more of them in the weeks to come, because very soon, not only will we be offering a first vaccination to everybody in groups 5 to 9 of the priority list, we'll be offering a second vaccine to everybody in groups 1 to 4. And the Member asked me if I'm confident that we will complete the vaccination of groups 1 to 4 within the time frame that we set out and promised and I'm very pleased to say to him that I am very confident that we will achieve that here in Wales.