COVID-19 in Caerphilly County Borough

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:38 pm on 9 November 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:38, 9 November 2021

I thank Delyth Jewell for making exactly that point, Llywydd. The Chief Medical Officer for Wales has led efforts to try to combat misinformation, and particularly to appeal to pregnant women to be vaccinated. They are far, far more at risk from coronavirus than they ever will be from the vaccine. And this is one of those examples where deliberate misinformation causes real harm. I don't have the actual figures in front of me, Llywydd, but I do know that unvaccinated pregnant women are very significantly over-represented in critical care beds in Wales, as well as across the border. In other words, women are not just falling ill with coronavirus and suffering from it in the community, but they are at the most severe end of the illness that coronavirus can create, and that causes a risk to them and to the circumstances in which they find themselves, and which, in any other circumstances, would be a matter of huge celebration to them.

So, I repeat exactly the appeal that Delyth Jewell has made, Llywydd: if there are women in Wales who have not been vaccinated and are being out off being vaccinated because of some of the things that they read on social media about vaccination, please look at what the real facts will tell you, and the chief medical officer has set those out absolutely clearly here in Wales. You are far better off, far safer by getting vaccination, and in Wales we would absolutely urge you to do so.