Hospital Capacity in South Wales East

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 11 January 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:35, 11 January 2022

Well, first of all, Llywydd, I have to take issue with the last remark. Staffing levels in A&E departments in Wales, at their complement level, are not unsafe—of course they're not; they meet the different royal college requirements. Now, at the moment, because of the omicron variant, we have significant proportions of staff in the NHS, and other public services in Wales, unable to be in the workplace. Aneurin Bevan itself has over 1,300 members of its staff either directly ill with the omicron variant or self-isolating because they've been in contact with it. There are nearly 10,000 staff across the whole of NHS Wales affected in that way. And, as hard as the service works to try to make sure that it protects essential services, and that people who are in the most clinically urgent position get the service they need, it is impossible to imagine that a service that has thousands of people unable to be in work because of a global pandemic can carry on as though that were not happening. So, I think the anxieties that people in Wales have are at how we can act together to protect ourselves and those staff from the wave of coronavirus that is passing through Wales. And I commend the staff in our NHS for everything that they are doing—the enormous strains they are under, to do everything they can, despite those difficulties, to go on providing a service day in, day out to patients in south-east Wales and across the whole of our nation.