Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 2 November 2021.
Thanks very much, Gareth. We clearly have to be very careful about protecting the vulnerable at this stage. The best way to protect the vulnerable is to make sure that they have been vaccinated, and that’s why we’re very keen to make sure that we prioritise the booster vaccination for those vulnerable people, for those people in care homes and, as I say, we’re doing remarkably well with our targets on that—already, 68 per cent have received their vaccination.
I’ve been listening to lots of podcasts recently in relation to health and what we can learn about the virus and what we’ve learnt internationally. One of the things that we’ve learnt internationally is that you can’t seal off care homes and think that they work independently from society. They are a part of communities. They have people going in and out of them as part of communities. The care workers are a part of communities. So, you can’t seal them off, and that is the international experience. And, therefore, what we’ve done is to make sure our guidance is very clear that people do need to take lateral flow tests if they are going to go visit people within care homes.
When it comes to care staff, actually, the rates of care staff are incredibly high—they’re in their 90s—and the small numbers who haven’t, some of them are, perhaps, new into this sector or just leaving the sector. There is a lot of movement within that sector, and that would go to explain why some people—. And, of course, there are some who, clinically, are not able to. So, we have had very active campaigns to make sure that we can get as many people in care homes as possible vaccinated.
In relation to the question on PCR tests and what happens if somebody in your household—. This would be guidance rather than a legal requirement.