Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:20 pm on 9 November 2021.
Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much for this debate. It has been a very interesting one, as we expected. I think first of all it's probably worth pointing out that we know that this virus spreads in confined spaces when people spend a lot of time there. That's exactly what we're trying to do. There's plenty of evidence to support that and that is what we're suggesting, and why we're keeping this restricted to those areas. I make no apologies for proposing this restriction when rates are so high and we are just entering our winter period. We don't make these decisions lightly. We know that we're in a situation where our NHS is really struggling at the moment, and we have over 800 people in hospital with COVID. Anything we can do to try and alleviate the situation and the pressure on the NHS at this point is something that we need to consider very seriously. You'll be here next week complaining about how we can't get people into hospitals. Well, this is a measure to enable to us to get fewer people in hospitals.
Experts tell us that we should go early and they tell us that every little contribution adds to our ability to contain what is a deadly virus. It's no surprise that the evidence is still building—this is a new virus, and it's constantly changing. The delta variant spreads 1,000 times faster than the alpha variant, and now we've got a sub-group of the delta variant, the AY.4.2, and we don't know much about that. So, of course the evidence is always going to be building—let's not be surprised by that. Certainly, this negativity is not the response that we're seeing from the general public, as so many of my colleagues have emphasised. Our first duty as a Government is to keep the population of Wales safe. You tell us to focus on the vaccination programme; well, I can tell you, we are going flat out and we're going a damn sight faster than the Government in the United Kingdom, although we know that it's not a race.
Certainly, when we talk about self-certification, it is important that it is about trust, and individuals are required to honestly reflect their vaccine status or the result of a test. It's the same system as the UK Government is asking people to use when they return from travel abroad, and it's an offence to falsify information to gain entry into a venue.