Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:29 pm on 26 May 2021.
Thank you very much, Rhun, and I look forward to working with you as we progress in terms of the pandemic, but also post-pandemic. We will have a great deal of work to do in terms of catching up.
I would want to commit to ensure that we do make announcements in the Senedd, wherever possible. I'm very eager to be transparent. I think we make better policy when we are transparent. I hope now, as we emerge from the election—clearly it was difficult during that period. But we also need to consider, during this period, that there will be times when we will still need to move very quickly indeed. And, of course, we will have to remove restrictions when they're not necessary, and do so quickly too. So, the situation works both ways.
There will be a third wave, Rhun; we are very aware that there will be a third wave. The question is how large that wave will be. And in terms of the new variant, we've done a great deal of work in terms of preparing for it. We're aware that it's likely that we'll see increased incidence here in Wales, and that's why we've put measures in place to enable local groups to carry out this surge testing and surge vaccination, where necessary. We're still at quite a low level at the moment—57 cases here in Wales at the moment—but of course I would be happy to respond to many more of the comments you made in detail.