Thank you for the opportunity to update Members on the COVID situation, during what is already proving to be a very challenging autumn. Now, in my last update I was able to report cases decreasing and plateauing, indicating we were potentially passing the peak of this wave. In the last three weeks, the situation in Wales deteriorated, recording our highest ever case rates during October—over 700 cases per 100,000. We know that mistakes at a private laboratory in England resulted in thousands of people wrongly being given negative test results, which may have contributed to this rise. We have also identified around 2,000 cases of a new variant in Wales, which we are closely monitoring.

It's clear that the pandemic is far from over and we must continue our efforts to follow the measures we've put in place to keep us, our families and our communities safe. The problem isn't simply the rising number of cases; it's the pressures they create on our NHS and social care services. We have urgent and emergency pressures related to non-COVID issues comparable to what we normally see in the depths of winter, and the rising number of COVID-19 cases is leading to greater occupancy of hospital beds and intensive care units. All of our health boards are facing this increased demand for services.

We've planned, and we've worked with our health and care partners, to develop our health and social care winter plan for 2021-22, which was published on 21 October. At the heart of this plan is a focus on patient safety and well-being. Through preventive activities to try and keep people well, we want to reduce the need for urgent and emergency care, which will, in turn, reduce pressures on the NHS. The plan calls for each region to develop an integrated health and social care winter plan through the mechanisms of the regional partnership boards. This supports a joined-up approach to winter planning, covering what is delivered by local authorities and what is delivered by health boards. Regional partnership boards are now working on addressing the seven priorities in the winter plan. The aim is to protect those in greatest need while also protecting essential services, our dedicated workforce and the public. I expect to see the plans developed by the regional partnership boards later this month, and we will review them to ensure that they are robust. 

A hundred and forty million pounds has been allocated to health boards and NHS trusts through the recovery fund to support delivery of safe services over the remainder of the year, which will include a very difficult winter period, and this is to treat the backlog of patients that has been built up over the past 18 months. This is on top of the £100 million that we allocated in May. A further £48 million has been allocated to support social care in Wales. A total of £9.8 million has been distributed across all RPBs—regional partnership boards—to support the delivery of the winter plan.

Now, I’d like to move on to the outcome of the 21-day review, which the First Minister announced last week. We're very aware of the harms that could be caused by the COVID restrictions that we were forced to put in place previously, and none of us wants to return to those measures. However, given the seriousness of the situation we’re in, we had to consider very carefully whether we needed to return to some stricter measures.