Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:15 pm on 2 March 2021.
It's hard to give a definitive response to the Member's question because I haven't reviewed the data for other parts of the UK. And indeed, you'll see variation, in particular in England, because England is a big country, and we know there's significant variation within English regions. The south-west of England has still had the lowest impact of COVID throughout the pandemic; other regions of England have been hit much harder as well. So, I think we need to look at not just national data, but, for England in particular, the regions of England to understand what a comparison would look like. It's probably best to do that by asking our Government statisticians in knowledge and analytical services to look at something, and I'm sure that in a future publication they can publish something that does compare the picture.
In Wales, it's broadly good news that we see a reduction in hospital admissions. The significant number are people who are recovering from COVID, but still need acute care, and we still see 110 per cent of our critical care capacity being used. The percentage of those who are being treated for COVID has been reducing, which is very good news, but it does still show that our NHS is under significant pressure. So, we're not at the point where we can open up a pathway for renormalising lots of treatment, because we don't have the capacity to care for all those people. It is a broadly improving picture, but still, nevertheless, being just below 1,500 people in our hospitals being treated for COVID does show something of the significance of the impact and the scale of the capacity that is still taken away from the way that our NHS would normally function, even if we then had to go on to consider the additional infection prevention and control methods. But I'll take on board the point the Member makes seriously, and I'll see how we can provide a properly comparative view on this.