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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:20 pm on 9 March 2021.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 3:20, 9 March 2021

Thank you for the questions. There's no need to apologise for needing to take a break with a cough. On care home staff and the vaccination rate, you're right to point out there was a lower rate of take-up amongst staff compared to residents. That's partly a feature of the vaccine hesitancy we see from a range of age groups. Of course, care home staff are made up of people of a range of different ages, including the younger age group, where we recognise that for people under 40, there's a larger hesitancy about the need or the reason to take up the vaccine. Some of the vaccine myths that are being spread by anti-vaxxers, the works of fiction, affect people who have or may want to have children again in the future. So, there is a concern that it may affect male or female fertility; there is absolutely no basis to that, but it is a persistent myth that is reappearing in every part of the UK and further afield as well. It's one of those areas where, actually, I think that one of the best things we can do, again, is to work right across the UK, regardless of our differing political stripes in each of the Governments, and even in this place too, to be really clear there is absolutely no truth to that, and it's about how we have a trusted and a unified message to persuade people to take up the vaccine, to reconsider the evidence about it. As I say, the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine doesn't come because I say that it's safe and effective, but I have a responsibility to be clear about it. It comes on the most trusted conversations people have and people they believe: our health service staff, scientists and often family and friends, people that you're close to, and that, unfortunately is both where people get trusted information, but it's also how misinformation can spread as well. So, there's a constant job of persuasion to do. Despite that, we are seeing very high levels of vaccination take-up within care homes, but certainly more for us to do, and you'll see that again when we move into the vaccination stage after groups 1 to 9 have been completed.

On hospital outbreaks, and the work we do on the nosocomial transmission, that's transmission between health and care staff and others, it's part of the reason why we think that there's been a stubborn continuance in north-west Wales. There's been an outbreak in Ysbyty Gwynedd, and we think that's led to higher figures there than would otherwise have been the case. We're about to publish an update on the advice and guidance on testing in hospitals. A significant part of that is about our work on nosocomial transmission, and we set out there how we're using both lateral flow devices, as well as polymerase chain reaction tests. Of course, that work is led by the deputy chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer here in Wales, so it's led by people who've got real professional leadership and respect, and it's also supported by the consistent advice that Public Health Wales have provided on how to minimise the prospects for nosocomial transmission, because those outbreaks can cause real harm. It's a positive feature of the reducing rates of coronavirus that those outbreaks will be less frequent than they would otherwise have been, and that's thanks to the hard work of everyone right across the country in helping to drive transmission rates down.

On your concern about health boards cancelling or rearranging appointments, I recognise that this happens from time to time, and it's about those people who may or may not be able to reset their appointments. I had to rearrange my own mother's appointment to take place as well, and it took some time to get through on the booking line, but I eventually did, and there was no trouble at all in rearranging the appointment. It is about the real encouragement of people to make the effort to rebook and to be really clear that the NHS won't leave people behind. So, if people do have difficulty attending their appointments, and they haven't been able to get through, they can still rebook and they should do so and take up the offer that is available, including if people have just changed their minds and now want to opt in to taking the vaccine.

I think you're right to point out the future challenges we'll have about multivaccination centres returning to their former purpose at some point in the future. It's a good problem to have, about our success in driving down the transmission and the need to have current facilities available in a different way. The positive aspect, though, is we have 546 different venues where the vaccine is already being delivered. So, as we get through more and more stages and successfully vaccinate the current groups of the population, the challenge will reduce. But your point about the longer term future is a fair one, too. We'll learn lots from this phase of vaccination about what we are likely to need to do in terms of redelivering a COVID vaccine in the future. What we don't know yet is when that would be and the sort of programme we'd have, because the current flu vaccination programme, for example, is largely delivered in general practice and community pharmacies. We still don't yet know if that normalisation is going to be possible in, if you like, the next stage of the vaccine, after we've protected the adult population in Wales. But we do think that we've already got the flexibility for future delivery to cover all adults within the country. 

Finally, on Andrew Evans's point about our need to deliver and our ability to deliver more than 30,000 doses a day, yes we do think we're going to be able to do that. We haven't done so in the recent past. That is simply a factor of supply. But, we do think that, through the rest of this week, you're going to start to see those figures return to about 30,000 doses in a day, and you'll see that carry on for a brief period of time, then a lull and then a steady rate of vaccine delivery as supply normalises out. And, on that basis, we're still in the fortunate position of having the best vaccination rate of any UK nation, with a greater portion of people in Wales having had both doses of the vaccine. That's good news for us, but it also shows that we're at the head of a very successful group of nations right across the UK at present, and I look forward to having more success to report in the coming days and weeks.