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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 9 March 2021.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 3:16, 9 March 2021

Thank you, Minister, for your statement, and once again, it is good news that we are vaccinating as many people as we are at present in Wales. I do have a couple of questions to ask you, though, in general about the vaccine programme. 

The first is that 15 per cent of care home staff have yet to be vaccinated, compared to less than 5 per cent of residents, and it's a much lower take-up than the healthcare staff—87.5 per cent of them have been vaccinated. Are you satisfied that all is being done to convince the more sceptical members of staff to get vaccinated, and what can we do to encourage them, because, as we know, our care home residents are among the most vulnerable in our communities?

My second question is about hospital outbreaks of coronavirus. What review is going on into the causes of hospital outbreaks? They're still occurring in pockets, and they're very detrimental to the starting up of services. Excuse me. I have read your framework for COVID-19 testing for hospital patients in Wales, but, of course, it doesn't really cover prevention within hospitals, and I wondered if you felt that we should do more to try and move that agenda along. I know, for example, in Hywel Dda University Health Board, we have quite a significant hospital outbreak at present in Withybush, and it is stopping the resumption of services.

While we're on the subject of health boards, would you consider what advice might be able to be given to health boards on cancelling and rearranging vaccine appointments? Many people have contacted me to say that they've received texts, they're desperate to go for their vaccine, they can't get there for one reason or another, but they haven't been able to get hold of anyone to rearrange it. And there's a feeling of guilt—I have to confess, I'm one of those—where I couldn't get back to anybody to rearrange my vaccine appointment, so I missed the first one, couldn't tell anyone, and they're now trying to make the second one. But I'm just one voice; I have been contacted by loads of people. They either get text messages where there's no phone number to go back to or no e-mail that they can drop it. And, of course, we can't all just suddenly appear to a particular date or a particular time. Can we do something about it? Because I think it's holding up some people being able to access vaccines, especially some of the more hard-to-reach groups that we've talked about many times before.

Andrew Evans, the chief pharmaceutical officer, has said that we have the capacity in Wales to deliver more than 30,000 vaccines a day. Now, we've not hit 30,000 vaccines a day since 4 March. I do understand some of it's to do with the supply, but reading your COVID update, dated 9 March, you're expecting that to increase with supply of vaccine, starting from this week and going forward, that there should be no problems. Do you think we'll be able to achieve that 30,000?

Finally, I just wanted to ask you about future plans. Mass vaccination centres—a number of them are in buildings and facilities that are used for other things, like leisure centres, and eventually they will kick back into play, and, therefore, we will not be able to use them as mass vaccination centres. Staff and volunteers are helping us at present, but at some point, they will have to go back to their other lives or to their day job. What plans are being put in place or looked at now to ensure that we still have the facilities and the human resource to be able to carry on vaccinating at pace, especially if we do anticipate a third wave? Of course, we're beginning to think that we may need to have a regular annual vaccination in order to protect us from coronavirus and the different mutations that pop up, therefore, we need to be able to build this into our system, and I wonder if you could update the Senedd on that. Thank you very much indeed. Apologies for the coughing fit.