Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:29 pm on 9 March 2021.
Thank you for the points and the questions. I welcome your congratulations to the NHS-led team for the significant achievement already achieved to date, and the confidence in the future delivery of this NHS-led vaccination programme in Wales. And, again, you're right, we do disagree on the JCVI advice, how we should follow it, and whether we should prioritise one group and deprioritise others. So, that's a point of fact that we disagree on that.
On second-dose delivery, we've made a choice on managing our stock of the Pfizer vaccine so that we can run the second doses effectively. It's about how efficient our programme is in making sure people receive their second dose in time, and that we don't end up with a problem later in this month where we potentially won't have enough second-dose stock available. And that would be a really big problem, I think. There are many people concerned about having to mix vaccines. Well, we're not doing that in Wales: a very clear approach to this. We're being efficient, and we have a different risk appetite, I think, to other countries about how they're going to run these doses deliberately, because you're right that there is some difference in the figures. The overall total of first doses delivered—the UK average is 33.5 per cent of first doses for the whole population; it's just short of that here in Wales. On the second dose, it's 1.7 per cent, but it's 5.8 per cent on second doses in Wales. And on the total doses delivered, the UK average is 35.2 per cent; in Wales, it's 37.5 per cent. So, we're delivering more vaccines per head than any other UK nation. And that information is available in the public domain, and I'm looking to make sure we publish not just the tables on the figures, but also some of those figures on UK comparison points as well. So, you don't have to wait for my statement; they'll be a regular part of how we publish information. And each country is already publishing their figures on how they use their vaccine stocks. So, rather than me trying to give a commentary on a run on how other countries are doing, I can talk about what we're doing and how we're effectively managing the stocks we have in a way that I think is highly successful.
On unpaid carers, it's possible that I'll be talking with the chair of one of the health boards who doesn't have the online form available later this week to understand why they haven't got that online form available. It is available online, and awareness of it is being spread not just through primary care, but, actually, crucially, through carers' organisations, who—. We went through a programme of co-designing the form—the Government, the NHS and those carers' organisations—and so we settled on something that we all think will work. And that takes you through a series of questions to make sure that you get your entitlement. That information is then entered into the Welsh immunisation system, and that should then generate the appointment. So, we want to see as much use of that online form as possible to give people a consistent experience across the country.
On asthma, you're right, there has been a letter that's gone from one of the senior clinical leads in the Government, and there's a letter that's gone out to primary care, and, given that it will have gone out to a whole range of primary care providers, I think that's essentially public. I'll just make sure that arrangements are made to publish that advice, so everyone can see how that advice has been provided for primary care to then manage their lists of people in a way that, again, should be as consistent as possible across the country. I don't think there's any difficulty in doing it, and I'm sure we can issue a simple written statement in the coming days to do so.