Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 7 December 2021.
Well, Llywydd, before I begin, could I say it is very good indeed to see the Member back in his place in the Chamber this afternoon? Thank you for that important question as well. We are concluding our discussions with primary care providers in Wales. We do want them to play a greater part in the short-term but urgent need to bolster our vaccination programme ahead of the arrival, as I'm afraid we now must expect, of a major wave of the omicron variant. In Wales, we have taken a wider view of primary care than in some parts of the United Kingdom in the vaccination field, so we also include high-street optometrists and dentists as well, who are able to clinically successfully carry out vaccination. The things that will have to be put to one side temporarily, we hope, will be the most routine aspects of primary care—important things, I know. We pay a lot of money through the contract to our general medical services colleagues to carry out those surveillance activities, monitoring of people's diabetic condition, their blood pressure, all of those things. It's not for a moment to say they're not important, but of all the things that GPs do, they probably can be set to one side for a brief period of time in order to have greater capacity in primary care to deliver more of the vaccination programme, because of the urgent need to get ahead as far as we can, and as fast as we can, of the likely impact of that new variant.