This year, the pressure on the health and social care system has been absolutely relentless. The direct and indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has made it extremely difficult for dedicated front-line staff. And this winter may, again, be the most challenging in the history of the NHS, with the ongoing demands of the pandemic and increased demands for other health services—the impact of winter respiratory viruses, as Altaf Hussain has just mentioned, the fragility in our social care system that many have mentioned, the need to continue with infection prevention control, and NHS staff who are exhausted, with some of them off sick with COVID.

Our approach to managing the pandemic is outlined in the coronavirus control plan, which is revised and reissued as the situation changes. We also issued a looking-forward document in March, demonstrating how we would rebuild the NHS. In the light of increasing pressures, we recently reviewed and reissued our local choices framework to support local decision making to protect patients and staff. And planning expectations are communicated annually to NHS organisations through our planning framework. We asked organisations across Wales to work in partnership to develop plans to safely meet the health and social care requirements of the people of Wales. The fluctuations in COVID-19 case rates add to the complexity of planning services, and we need to remain ready to respond to rapidly changing circumstances.

Later this month, as you're aware, we're going to be publishing our comprehensive winter plan for health and social care, setting out our priorities in response to expected and exceptional winter pressures. These priorities are already well known, and some are already being delivered at a local, regional and national level, with a focus on reducing the risk of people needing hospital treatment and keeping people safe and well. I'm pleased to say that many of the points that certainly Rhun ap Iorwerth talked about in terms of the need to look at prevention, making sure that we direct people to the right places—a lot of that is already happening. We have the Help Us to Help You campaign addressing the issues that John Griffiths asked about: how do we tell people where to go? How do we get people to access the right services? So, a lot of that is already being done, and we know that we need to keep that focus on reducing the risk of people needing hospital treatment and keeping people safe and well.