3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on COVID-19 Vaccinations

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:28 pm on 23 February 2021.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:28, 23 February 2021

Thank you. On your first point, as you're aware, the time in the first few weeks when there was criticism over the vaccine roll-out programme in Wales was a time when we were building our infrastructure, and I think it's been proven that that was the right thing to do. We built a way to deliver that meant we could move at real pace in a sustained manner. So, that's why we are still at present the leading UK nation when it comes to the proportion of the population for first doses—more than a third of the adult population have already had their first dose. And we are in second place within the UK nations, just behind Northern Ireland, when it comes to the percentage of second doses we've delivered. And that's in particular the material progress we've made over the last week or so on delivering more and more second doses.

In terms of your constituent and her concern that she's in group 6 and has yet to have her vaccine, I expect that we will, as I said, match the pace in England where they think they can complete all groups up to priority group 9 by the middle of April. So, I don't think that your constituent will have to wait very much longer. The additional supply that we've been told will be brought forward will allow us to deliver at a much quicker pace, because every part of our system has said that with more certainty over supply and clarity of early supply, we can go even faster. So, I hope that will give your constituent and many others confidence in the weeks ahead. And when it comes to groups 1 to 4, we pledged that we'd have the offer for everyone in groups 1 to 4, and it was the same in every other UK nation. There will have been some catch-up in terms of the actual delivery.

When it comes to vaccine supply, of course, this does rely on the supplies we're getting through UK procurement. I should say that procuring the vaccine for the whole of the UK is a UK Government responsibility, but it's a responsibility that has broadly been done well. We have had significant volumes of vaccine supply to help us get on with our job of delivering that vaccine. We've had some smoothing out and a dip in the last two weeks in vaccine supply. That was predicted and expected. That's why we've seen a minor dip within that. I think within Wales, within England, within every country, you could have vaccine delivery centres that have a slightly different supply compared to each other, but overall, we're going very fast. I think that trying to look at Wales as somehow being responsible for a problem in vaccine supply is not an accurate way to go about describing the challenges that we have, and in any event, I think the speed of the roll-out in Wales, and in every other UK nation, is something we could all take a deal of pride in.