1. Statement by the First Minister: Update on COVID-19

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:58 pm on 22 December 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:58, 22 December 2021

Dirprwy Lywydd, can I begin by echoing everything that Jenny Rathbone said about the dedication of the people who work in the care sector and in the NHS? Most of us in this call today will be at home on Christmas Day with members of our family or with friends and they'll be in work. And they'll be going on providing the care that we rely on them to provide. So, I completely associate myself with what she said. The impact of the pandemic on those workers is not simply a physical impact—it's not just the hours and hours and hours that they are in work; it has been the emotional toll that it has taken on those workers too. I recently had a conversation with a young woman GP who lives in my own constituency and she told me in the most matter of fact way of the video that she had made for her young children in case she herself became infected with coronavirus and died—that, every day, she was putting herself in harm's way in order to look after other people. It's hard to imagine, really, isn't it, the emotional toll that takes on people who feel that they were doing that—doing it willingly, doing it because that was the job they'd chosen to undertake in life and to do it on our behalf. It must be desperately frustrating for people who do that—to believe that not every action that could be taken is being taken to control the emergence of new variants across the world. The material that Gordon Brown published—part of his work for the WHO this week—demonstrates that this job can be done; it’s just the political will that is required to be summoned up in order to do it.