4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the impact of COVID-19 variants of concern on communities in Caerphilly? OQ56785

Both alpha and delta variants of COVID-19 have produced significant adverse impacts on communities in Caerphilly, accelerating transmission, increasing positivity levels and leading to more Caerphilly residents falling ill from this dreadful disease.

As you can imagine, a lot of Caerphilly residents have contacted me about international travel, and it seems, from the answer to Rhun ap Iorwerth, that the Welsh Government is minded to go in the same direction as the UK Government, for very practical reasons. That means people will travel at an amber level, even if advised not to. In England, TUI is offering travellers a £20 PCR test run by Chronomics, and in Wales, you have to go through the Corporate Travel Management web portal to take an NHS test, which costs £170. So, there's quite a big difference in the cost between the two tests. Will the Welsh Government open up to accepting the Chronomics test from residents, and if not, how does the Government justify that difference in cost?

Well, Llywydd, the advice of the Welsh Government is clear to people: don't travel abroad. I don't intend to divert the activities of my officials into making it easier for people to do something that the Welsh Government so clearly thinks is unadvisable.

People taking tests before they leave have to take tests that meet the entry criteria of the country to which the individual is travelling. When people return to Wales, then a PCR test is required; for people returning from amber countries, then the Member is right that those are NHS tests. There are good reasons why that is preferable, because that guarantees that the results of those tests are entered into the patient record; it guarantees that we are able to use the genomic sequencing capacity of Wales—some of the best sequencing capacity anywhere in the world—to make sure that anybody returning from abroad with a new variant of the virus, that that is spotted quickly and effectively by the public service. I think those are compelling reasons as to why an NHS test is preferable, and we have no plans to change that position.

First Minister, while Caerphilly has the second highest rate of new cases of the variant, as you've just outlined, thanks to the vaccine, this is not currently leading to a spike in the Aneurin Bevan health board area, with only seven admissions testing positive for COVID-19. You've just said to us now there are 760 cases in the whole of Wales, out of a population of 3 million. First Minister, what levels of cases would be acceptable for releasing all the restrictions?

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.

First Minister, we know that the rates of COVID are increasing again in our communities, and after 16 long months of lockdown, members of the public are understandably fatigued with the restrictions, but the new variants are incredibly transmissible, so how do we get that message across to a public that is hearing irresponsible and confused messaging coming out of an English Government that can't make up its mind about masks?

I think the good news about the Welsh public is that people in Wales continue to support the careful and cautious way in which we have responded together to the virus in Wales. I think there is a genuine sense in Wales that this is not just a matter of personal responsibility. The answer to dealing with coronavirus cannot possibly be, 'You're on your own, decide for yourself, make it up in the way that you would prefer'. People in Wales have understood all the way through that this is a matter not just of how I behave, it is a matter of how we behave. This is a collective response to the virus, and people in Wales have been prepared to play their part all the way through.

I can't speak for the post boxes of other Members of the Senedd, but my post box over the last week has been full of people writing to me asking the Welsh Government not to step aside from the sensible precautions that we have all been following together. Often, that comes from people who are themselves vulnerable and who are deeply anxious about what it will be like for them if they are asked to go into places and into contexts where other people are no longer being asked to observe those simple and sensible measures. So, I think at least we have this on our side, in answer to Delyth Jewell's question—that the mood of Welsh people is not a mood of thirsting for some spurious freedom day; it remains a cautious approach in which people want each one of us to go on playing our part.