Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:44 pm on 3 November 2021.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 2:44, 3 November 2021

Well, frankly, I'm not sure if I could work harder in my job than I am at the moment, but I can tell you that we know we have got lessons to learn in relation to COVID and the way that the pandemic has wreaked havoc on our communities. Of course we've got lessons to learn, because this is a novel virus; nobody knew about it. We're still learning about it. There's a new sub-variant of delta, the AY4.2. We're still learning. It's still changing. Of course, we've got things to learn. We will learn those lessons, and we are learning those lessons. After every COVID death in hospital there is an assessment to see what we could have learnt from that. But we're not waiting for the inquiry for that to happen; there are inquiries constantly going on so that we're learning as we go along. And I think we have got to be, of course, sensitive to the fact that there are literally thousands of people now mourning in Wales loved ones who've contracted the virus, and it's particularly sad if they've contracted the virus in hospital.

I've been listening to lots of podcasts over the half-term period, international podcasts that talked about the possibility of ring-fencing vulnerable people, and particularly in care homes, for example, and what these podcasts were saying is that, actually, nobody managed to do that. You couldn't close off vulnerable people, because they are part of a society, and people work in hospitals, there are comings and goings, and it's very, very difficult to isolate people from people who work in hospitals who need to go home at night to their loved ones as well. So, of course it's difficult, and of course we've also got to be sensitive to the fact that there are people who want to go and visit loved ones in hospital. Getting that balance right is really, really difficult, and of course there will be lessons to be learnt, and we are learning those lessons, but we've probably still got more lessons to learn as we go on, because this pandemic is not over.