3. Statement by the First Minister: The Coronavirus Control Plan

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:26 pm on 14 July 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 3:26, 14 July 2021

I thank the leader of the opposition for those very constructive questions. I'll do my best to answer them all briefly. Provided that the public health situation remains as it is, then the restrictions that I've outlined this afternoon, as set out in the coronavirus control plan, are the restrictions that we envisage. I don't envisage more than that, but that does depend on the public health situation remaining as favourable as it is today. 

On face coverings, we will use the same set of tests that we have set out in previous iterations of the coronavirus control plan, and that means that we don't rely on a single measure, we rely on a rounded set of measures that include prevalence in the community, positivity rates, the extent to which illness is converting into impact on hospitalisation and so on. So, it'll be a rounded set of measures, which all together tell us whether the virus is sufficiently suppressed to allow us to move beyond mandation of face coverings. I said in my statement that, while face coverings will remain mandatory in indoor settings, we are removing their mandation in hospitality, we're removing their mandation in education settings, and we would like to remove their mandation in further indoor settings, as the coronavirus position allows. 

In relation to self-isolation, I don't think, Llywydd, that I said that the TTP system needed to improve. I did say that it needed to amend itself. It is going to move from a system in which the call you get from a TTP worker is one that tells you that you have been in contact with someone who has tested positive and therefore you now are required to self-isolate to what is called a 'warn and inform' system. So, the script for all our workers in TTP will have to alter. They will still provide the best possible advice to people who have come into contact with someone who has tested positive. They will explore with the individual their own circumstances, because people who have been doubly vaccinated but who have significant underlying health conditions may wish to continue to take some measures to protect themselves if they have come into contact with someone who definitely is suffering from the virus.

The move to a 'warn and inform' system will take a small number of weeks. Scripts have to be changed, people have to be retrained to do it, and we want to be in a position where the TTP service has access to the record of somebody's vaccination. It cannot simply be a self-certification system. It cannot be that the TTP system asks you, 'Have you been doubly vaccinated?' and all that happens is that you say 'yes', and then it says, 'And was it more than two weeks ago?' and you say 'yes' again and that's the only check in the system. For this to have the public confidence that we want it to have, there has to be more to it than that, and that has to be planned into the system as well. That will just take a short number of weeks. 

Risk assessments are mandatory now, Llywydd. They are mandatory under our coronavirus regulations, and they're mandatory under Health and Safety Executive regulations as well, and we'll continue to do them in the way we have up until now, which is not a simple, uniform, same-everywhere assessment. Inevitably, the factors that affect the safety of workers and users of any workplace vary according to the nature of the workplace itself. 

The leader of the opposition asked me what the model shows. And what the model shows, Llywydd, is that the impact on the health service is incredibly sensitive to shifts in at least two of the factors at play—incredibly sensitive to the extent to which the vaccination does provide a defence against the virus. And a shift of just 2 per cent or 3 per cent in the effectiveness of the virus is the difference between large numbers of people needing or not needing hospitalisation.

And the second variable is the extent to which people do continue to observe all those small but sensible actions that we ask people to take in their own lives. If people continue, as people in Wales have, to do their best to look after themselves and others, that will suppress the number of people needing hospitalisation. If people act as though coronavirus has gone away, and is no risk to themselves or others, then that will drive more numbers into the hospital sector. At the better end of that spectrum, then the impact on the NHS is manageable, despite the fact that the NHS is so busy with everything else it's trying to do. If the dial gets set at the other end of that spectrum, then we will be back where we were in the winter, with very large numbers of people needing to be cared for in a hospital, with all the impact that that would make on the ability of the NHS to go on doing all of those other things.

The issue of spikes—we've relied on national measures ever since the turn of this year, and I think that has served us well in terms of simplicity of communication, and the ability of people to follow what is asked of them. And at the moment, I think that will be the primary way we will deal with things. We have had local measures. We've had local measures in Rhondda Cynon Taf and in Merthyr; we've had local measures in parts of north Wales. But they're supplementary to that national approach, rather than a substitute for it.

And the final question that Andrew R.T. Davies asked me was whether the vaccination will alter the measures that we would need to take. Well, provided the vaccine remains as effective as it is, against the Kent variant and the delta variant, then the answer would definitely be, 'Yes, we will have a far stronger defence.' Were we to be in the very unhappy position of a further variant emerging, where the vaccine was not an effective defence against it, well, inevitably, we would have to calibrate other measures, to take account of the fact that the vaccine isn't providing the defence that it currently does. But our hope must be that the vaccine goes on being effective, and the booster campaign that we have planned for the autumn will certainly help in that way.