COVID-19 Rates in South Wales East

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 3 November 2021.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 2:20, 3 November 2021

Diolch yn fawr, Delyth. You are absolutely right that we believe that the incident at the Immensa lab and the fact that there were so many tests that came from Wales—. We estimate that about 4,000 people in Wales were wrongly told that their tests were negative. If you extrapolate from that and look at it—imagine, 4,000 people wandering around thinking that they're clear when, in fact, they could be infecting other people—clearly that was bound to have an impact on our rates. And that is, we believe, one of the reasons for these incredibly high rates in parts of east Wales.

We are still waiting for that report from the UK Government, but are still requesting that of them because we do need to know what went wrong so that we can learn and make sure it doesn't happen again. And, of course, we do have our own lab here in Wales, and we need to keep an eye on that. Of course, the majority of Welsh tests go to that lab in Newport, but at times when there are extremely high levels of requests for tests, then some of those get diverted, and that's exactly what happened in relation to the Immensa lab near Wolverhampton. So, all of those people who were affected, those 4,000 cases, have been contacted if they were within a specific window—prior to that they would have been out of the period in which they were required to isolate—and they have been requested to re-test. So, we think that the situation has now been contained, but obviously the consequences we are continuing to pay for.