Asymptomatic Workplace Testing

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 24 February 2021.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 2:19, 24 February 2021

Well, your second question is really a matter for employers, that's why it's important that they work that through with their workplace representatives, including, crucially, trade unions. Because the tests are there as a tool to help protect the workforce, to help us to have early warning of those people who don't have symptoms. And as we understand it, about a third of people don't display classic symptoms, but nevertheless do have coronavirus. We also know that lateral flow tests have quick results, but also, they're not as accurate as a PCR test—that's why anyone who tests positive should then get themselves tested with a PCR test as well, but they need to go home and isolate from the point they test positive with a lateral flow test. As we're seeing a reduction in transmission and prevalence of the virus, the accuracy of the lateral flow tests—I think that second test with PCR is even more important then as well.

Then, when it comes to how to administer the tests, part of the offer for businesses is about the training on the undertaking of those tests as well. We're not going to be in a position to have healthcare workers going in and administering the level of tests we're providing. The current tests we've made available to early years and education and health and care will amount to about a quarter of a million tests being delivered each week. We don't now have healthcare staff to deliver all of these tests. We've had to have approval from the regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, on how tests can be undertaken by individuals, but the training to undertake those, to make sure they're taken appropriately, is really important.

We accept that in providing it this way it's the same challenge that every other UK country faces too, but even if we accept that not every test will be taken in the optimum manner, we will identify a range of people who are asymptomatic whom we would not otherwise have identified. It will help to take positive cases that would not otherwise be identified out of workplaces and out of circulation. The self-isolation will help to reduce the transmission of the virus.

So, there is no pretence that this is a perfect, error-free approach, either in Wales or any other part of the UK, but it is part of reducing the prevalence of the virus and getting more people to self-isolate appropriately to reduce the harm, economically and in healthcare terms, that coronavirus has caused.