COVID-19 Variants of Concern

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 13 July 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:15, 13 July 2021

First of all, just to be clear, that's 760 new cases in a single day, and today there will be hundreds more. At the current rate of increase, there will be many many more hundreds after that. I congratulate the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and the local authority in Caerphilly for achieving some of the best rates of vaccination anywhere in Wales, and it is great that the vaccine is altering the relationship between falling ill and needing hospitalisation. That is why we are still able to contemplate further easements of the current restrictions. But, as I said in an earlier answer to Rhun ap Iorwerth, none of us should ignore the risks that are caused when you have large numbers of people falling ill every day in the community. It increases the risk of new variants emerging, it increases the risk that people's immunity will wane, it increases the risk of people falling ill with long COVID, it increases the risk that people are not available to be in the workplace because they have fallen ill or they've been in contact with somebody who has fallen ill. So, while I agree with the point that Laura Anne Jones made, Llywydd, on the importance of that link between hospitalisation and the virus, it's only part of the story, and we need to go on being concerned at the scale at which the delta variant is taking hold in Wales and the hundreds and hundreds of people who are falling ill as a result.