We are ready to restart. Apologies for that technical break. I now call on the leader of the Welsh Conservatives to pose questions to the First Minister—Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Today, First Minister, the first real-world study on vaccines against the omicron infection has been published. It's important to note that this data is from the first three weeks of the outbreak, so it might change, but it is the first serious study of its kind. The findings show that the virus variant is 29 per cent milder, that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine is 30 per cent effective at reducing transmission, and, importantly, that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine is 70 per cent effective at reducing hospitalisation.

First Minister, I appreciate that this data has only just been published this morning, but can I have your reaction to this study, and that of your advisers? And what impact will this information have on potential plans for imposing restrictions on Friday, and ultimately averting the complete lockdown of Wales?  

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.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister, and it was good to get some optimism from that report that came out this morning.

Obviously, another strand of work that the Welsh Government is undertaking is the roll-out of the booster campaign, and the health Minister has been doing a press conference this morning, talking about everyone will have an offer by the end of December, not necessarily have their appointment by the end of December. How far into the new year will people be expected to receive those offers before they get the booster? Because that’s a really important consideration. There’s one thing getting the offer; there’s another thing getting the booster.

Well, of course, the leader of the opposition is absolutely right in that. Our offer is the same as it is anywhere in the United Kingdom—it is to make sure that, by the end of this month, everybody’s had an offer. The offer will extend into the new year to the shortest possible extent. But that is not entirely in the hands of the Government, because there are two things in play here. There is the rate at which we can step up the supply of vaccination—and a huge amount is being done to make sure that we have vaccination centres open more hours, vaccination centres with more lanes, vaccination centres with walk-in capacity as well as appointment capacity, just to give some examples. But, as well as the supply side, there is the demand side—the extent to which people come forward to take up the appointments that they are offered. And if people don't come forward in the numbers we need to see, or if people ask for their appointments to be rearranged, then that will push that date further into the new year. So, if there's a single message that I would want to get across in today's session—I hope that many Senedd Members will help in this, in passing that message on as well—it is that there is nothing more important that any person can do than to keep that appointment that they will be offered. Because the more people who keep the appointment, the faster we will get through the numbers, and the fewer the number of days we will need in the new year to complete the programme.

We’ve had these preliminary results this morning, First Minister, from the survey in South Africa. We’ve also got the booster campaign, which I’ve just questioned you on, and the roll-out of that booster campaign, but also, in the press conference that the health Minister took this morning, she highlighted the impact on services—general health services—whether they be primary, or elective surgery. But one thing Chris Whitty addressed the UK Cabinet over this morning was the impact on the NHS workforce of potential infection rates. Have you got any modelling that would show what that might translate, in Welsh terms, to in NHS staff here in Wales who, potentially, could, obviously, be off work for some considerable period of time, with infection rates as Chris Whitty has been highlighting this morning to the UK Cabinet? And if you have that information, are you able to share it with us, so that we can understand the impact on NHS services across Wales?

Well, I thank Andrew R.T. Davies for that, because that’s a really important point. At the most difficult part of this spectrum, we could see largely elevated numbers of people needing help from health and social care services meeting a service where there are fewer people available to provide the help that is needed, because those members of staff will be exposed to the impact of the omicron variant alongside everybody else. Now, the good news is that, in those populations, we already have very high coverage with the booster vaccine. So, that will protect that workforce. But if we see a very large wave, affecting very large numbers of people, then people who work in our health and social care system will be swept up in it as well. Even today, 11 per cent of our GP workforce are not in work because of the delta variant of coronavirus. So, if you extrapolate that and imagine the impact of an omicron wave of the sort that Chris Whitty will have been describing to the UK Cabinet, then you can see that the impact is potentially very significant. Now, all of that is being modelled through the work that we do with Swansea University and with our local health boards, and action is being taken—as I say, particularly by prioritising those staff for the booster campaign—to protect as many of those people as possible. Some changes to the self-isolation requirements to see whether people can be safely back in the workplace again as quickly as possible will also be part of that whole consideration. But, every single one of us can do things to protect ourselves, and by protecting ourselves we protect other people, and that includes the people we will be relying upon to see us through if the wave of omicron hits us as some of the models suggest it might.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. There is some optimistic news in the emerging evidence that Andrew R.T. Davies referred to, but it also finds that two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine provide zero protection against the omicron variant, although the same caveats apply to that evidence—a small sample, preliminary findings, et cetera. It does find that, even in the case of AstraZeneca, a booster jab would increase the level of protection to 71 per cent. Obviously, getting the booster jab for everyone by the end of the month, I think, is a very important goal, but is there some consideration being given, in the light of this evidence, to giving priority to those who received the AstraZeneca vaccination?

Well, Llywydd, Adam Price is quite right that the evidence on the efficacy of the two doses is not great for Pfizer or AstaZeneca—even Pfizer, in that study, is around 30 per cent protection—which is why the booster programme is so absolutely essential. Because two doses of AstraZeneca don't protect you; two doses of AstraZeneca and a booster takes that protection up to over 70 per cent. Now, we will continue to follow the advice of the JCVI in Wales about how we prioritise calling people forward for vaccination with the booster. There is some congruence between the JCVI list of priorities and people who got AZ in the first two rounds of vaccination. So, these things have some consistency with one another. We will work our way down the age ranges, and you get to a point in people's 30s where we were actually using Pfizer rather than AZ for most people. So, I think sticking with the JCVI advice, calling people forward in order of clinical vulnerability, is the right thing to do, and to a significant, not a perfect extent, but to a significant extent that will address the issue that Adam Price has just raised with me.

First Minister, it's been reported that the Scottish Government may today be announcing some changes in social distancing around household mixing, but in the form of advice rather than regulations. I was wondering whether that is a policy option that is under consideration by the Welsh Government. And previously you said, in considering going up the alert status levels, you would focus on leading indicators like case numbers, rather than lagging indicators like deaths and hospitalisations. I was wondering, given the suggestion that maybe the hospitalisations are not tracking case numbers quite as closely as they have done with previous waves, based on the South African data, whether you plan to take a kind of more holistic view, looking at leading and lagging indicators in deciding what would be the most proportionate response.

I thank the leader of Plaid Cymru for both of those points. I've had a series of opportunities in the last few days to hear from the First Minister of Scotland and to get some insight into the way in which the Scottish Government's Cabinet will be discussing these matters today. I think the approach of guidance, strong guidance, is available to us and will be something that we will wish to conisder as a Cabinet during this week.

Over the course of the pandemic, people in Wales have demonstrated, I believe, that they are very keen to hear the advice that they get through the chief medical officer, from our chief scientist, and as it's relayed by Ministers, and providing them with good advice is certainly part of the repertoire that we have for trying to help people to keep themselves safe. We will always take a rounded set of indicators into account when coming to our decisions, and that does include both hospitalisation and mortality—[Inaudible.]

I think I'm going to need to cut across you, First Minister. I'm sorry, but there seems to be a problem with your sound at the moment. Let me take a quick pause. Let me ask you to try again, and if not, we'll have to—. Just try again, First Minister.

Llywydd—[Inaudible.]

No. We do have a problem. We'll have to take another technical break to resume the First Minister's sound. A technical break, then, again. Apologies for this, Members.

Plenary was suspended at 14:06.

The Senedd reconvened at 14:08, with the Llywydd in the Chair.

So, we return now to the First Minister's response to Adam Price's question. First Minister.

Diolch, Llywydd. I was simply reiterating a point that I'd made earlier to Andrew R.T. Davies, that even if hospitalisation rates were to be lower with omicron, if the raw numbers of people falling ill with it are sharply escalated, that will by itself result in large numbers of people needing hospitalisation.

COVID is an airborne disease, of course, and we know good ventilation and air purification are very effective in combating infection. Is there more, First Minister, we could be doing on this front? Belgium has installed carbon dioxide monitors in schools and, indeed, workplaces to see if ventilation needs to be improved. Ireland this week has announced a further €60 million investment in air purification devices in schools, using a mixture of high-efficiency particulate air and ultraviolet light. Given the estimated 3,500 children who continue to suffer the symptoms of long COVID in Wales, isn't this an investment in our children's health, as well as everyone else's, that we should also be making?

Well, I thank Adam Price for that important point. Of course, we have carbon dioxide monitors now available here in Wales and being deployed in schools, but there is more that can be done on ventilation. It is a very important part of the way in which we can keep one another safe. The chief medical officer and the chief nursing officer wrote out to the health service in Wales only in the last few days relaying further advice on the hierarchy of actions that can be taken to make sure that people who work and people who are being treated in our hospitals and other closed settings of that sort are kept as safe as possible, and ventilation was one of the issues that they emphasised in the letter that they have set out. We continue to review the evidence from other parts of the world on actions that can be effective in assisting in schools and in other settings—workplaces, for example, as well as hospitals and care homes—to assist in improving ventilation and monitoring the quality of air. And where there are ideas or practical solutions that we find elsewhere, we'll certainly be open to learning from them and seeing what we can do to support their implementation.