3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on Coronavirus

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:24 pm on 8 June 2021.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mabon ap Gwynfor Mabon ap Gwynfor Plaid Cymru 3:24, 8 June 2021

(Translated)

I'm pleased to hear that you've said that you recommend that those travelling to Wales should be tested, but I don't know many people in Manchester who look at news provided by BBC Wales, so I'm not sure how they're supposed to learn about those recommendations. But the fact is, unlike what the First Minister said on Friday, namely that the delta variant had come into Wales via the air, and to Llandudno particularly, we know for a fact now that that certainly isn't the case as far as my constituency is concerned. There have been cases discovered in Porthmadog, and this is the response I got from Gwynedd public protection last week: 'I can confirm that the public protection service hasn't identified any direct link between the cluster of COVID cases in the Porthmadog area and foreign travel.' Therefore, it has come in from these islands.

You talked about closing the borders. Nobody else has mentioned closing the borders, but we do need to see this situation managed. So, what steps are you going to take to ensure that the variant doesn't travel further and isn't disseminated further? We know that the Scottish Government is recommending that people don't travel to these areas identified as hotspots. Internal travel within these nations isn't just one-way to north Wales. There are many people from north Wales who travel to work in Stockport, in Bolton and those areas, so we need to manage this. You're done this with Portugal, where the cases are a little under 40 per 100,000 population. In Bolton, it's 355 per 100,000 population; it's 487 in Blackburn. We need to control that, and we need to ensure that people working there will be compensated because they can't go to work, hopefully, and we need to manage the flow of people in order to ensure that this variant doesn't travel further.