Thank you, Llywydd. You'll be pleased to know that I'm ready this time. Following on from my colleague Delyth Jewell's question earlier—

3. What assessment has the Minister undertaken of COVID-19 rates? OQ57115

—drwy weddill Cymru?

Thank you very much. The current rates of COVID-19 across Wales are the highest in the UK. We continue to monitor the situation closely and to take all appropriate measures. Continued public support is vital to the success of our efforts.

Thank you very much for that, Minister. Well, very many people are contacting my office, and have done so over the past week or two, concerned that they can't access the booster jab. They have large distances to travel to visit a surgery offering the booster jab, and many people are reliant on public transport. Of course, you will understand that they are therefore reluctant to travel on a bus because of the risks attached to that, so what happens is that they don't go at all and can't get that booster vaccination, and are therefore vulnerable to infection. Will you therefore ensure that health boards make sure that the booster jab is available and within reach to every community, particularly the most rural? Thank you.

Thank you very much for that. It's very important that people who have an invitation to go for the booster do take the opportunity to do so. I'm pleased to say that the rates are among the highest in the UK in terms of the boosters at present, but we have a long way to go, of course.

We're very aware that the situation is very different to the first round because during the first vaccination round we were using AstraZeneca, and that was easier to deal with in local communities. With Pfizer, we have gone for centres that are larger, and so that means that, in certain rural locations, it's more difficult for people to reach them. That's why I think it's important that there is an opportunity for people to get there. I know that in the Hywel Dda area, for example, there is an opportunity for people to phone ahead to arrange transport to reach those centres, so I think it's worth looking into seeing whether that service is available in Betsi Cadwaladr, and I'm happy to ask them, if they don't offer that, to look into whether they could consider that. But given that it is an area where you need a lot of people going to a large centre, I do think that people will have to travel further this time, I'm afraid.

Minister, while COVID-19 rates do remain high, the latest Public Health Wales data shows the latest seven-day average is actually falling to 546 cases per 100,000 people. The First Minister said in his recent press conference that the idea of further restrictions would follow if cases remained high. So, I'm curious to get an understanding of exactly how high these would need to be for further restrictions to follow in the forthcoming three-week review. Previously, the Welsh Government has set targets, if you like—local lockdowns at 50 cases per 100,000, and a national lockdown at 500 cases per 100,000. I appreciate that the UK-wide vaccine roll-out success has weakened the link between cases and hospitalisations and deaths, so that figure may not be cases but it may be hospitalisations, deaths, or something else entirely. But, if the Welsh Government is following the science, there must be a number at which these further restrictions would be enacted. So, is the Minister able to reveal that specific figure to us in the Chamber today at which further restrictions would be imposed?

Thanks. I think you'll find that what we've been doing is using the measure, where we determine what we do in terms of lockdown or not, of whether the NHS is going to be overwhelmed. That has been our measuring stick. Clearly, in the first wave, when we didn't have access to vaccines, we saw a higher number of those hospitalisations happening. We're not in that situation anymore thanks to our fantastic vaccination programme. So, we are in a situation where, thankfully, at last, our rates do seem to be coming down. We don't know what's around the corner. We know that this new variant, this AY.4.2, is probably slightly more infectious even than the delta, so we still have yet to learn to what extent that is going to spread, and we haven't seen that spread perhaps within our schools yet. We've got to see if the waning of the vaccination happens quicker than our ability to get the booster into people's arms. All of these things are factors that we will need to put in. So, it'll never be a precise figure where we determine. What we said in that 21-day review is that if cases continue to increase, then we will have to look at working our way up those levels. Hopefully we won't be in that situation, and hopefully those figures will come down.