Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 14 December 2021.
Llywydd, I thank Andrew R.T. Davies for that. I'm aware of the study. As he says, it's the first study of its kind, but it is inevitably—as I think that he himself suggested—therefore preliminary. It tells us something about the early period. It doesn't tell us yet about what happens as the omicron variant takes hold and as more information emerges on the progress of the disease. It's also a study in a South African context, which is different in many ways to our own. So, encouraging in its way, but not to be relied upon as a strong basis for policy decision making. And there is a sense in which the issues that it reports—the severity of the illness and the extent to which it escapes the current vaccines—are second-order questions. Because if the transmissibility of the virus is of the rate that we are currently seeing in Scotland and in London, then, even if it is milder, and even if there is a slightly better efficacy of the vaccine, there still will be a very, very large number of people falling ill, and a percentage of those people will fall seriously ill, and those large numbers will drive people into needing the help of the NHS. So, a preliminary study, not to be over-relied on, and, even if its grounds for some preliminary optimism are true, it won’t save us from the onslaught that this new variant is likely to create across the United Kingdom and in Wales as well.