Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 9 November 2021.
Well, Llywydd, I know the case to which the Member refers, and it's clearly not acceptable that someone was left to wait for as long as that individual was. The ambulance service, as the Member will know, is under enormous strain from the highest ever level of calls that it has experienced in its history; from staff sickness levels, which affect the number of people it's able to put into ambulances and on the road, and a significant amount of that is coronavirus-related itself; and from coronavirus conditions, which mean that ambulance staff have to get in and out of PPE between calls and ambulances delayed by the need to clean them between journeys, because of COVID conditions. All of that helps to explain some of the stress the system is under, but nobody is satisfied when individuals are left waiting too long for an ambulance to arrive.