3. Statement by the Minister for Health and Social Services: Update on COVID-19

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:56 pm on 18 January 2022.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 2:56, 18 January 2022

Thanks very much, Russell. First of all, on the isolation period, you'll be aware, Russell, that we've already reduced that from 10 to seven days, and the UK Health Security Agency, interestingly enough, their evidence previously was very robust on the fact that they wanted to stick at seven. Now, my understanding is that the underlying evidence on this has not changed. I still haven't seen the analysis on which that decision has been made, so I'm waiting for advice on that. You say, Russell, that most has gone after five days. That's true, but 30 per cent of people are still carrying the infection after five days. So, that's quite a lot of people. So, if you want to be sending people back into workplaces after five days and 30 per cent of them are in that situation, then I do think we need to give that some pretty serious thought. We will be looking at the evidence on this. My analysis from just watching what's going on in England is that, actually, this is a political call and it's a judgment call that they're making not on the basis of science and evidence, not on the basis of changed science and evidence, but on the basis of the pressure that the NHS and other services are under at the moment. So, it's more of a political judgment. Now, we have to assess the risks. We may be in a different situation in terms of risk, but let's be absolutely clear: there is a risk if we're sending people back into workplaces and 30 per cent of them potentially could be carrying the virus. That's another risk you have to consider. Now, we'll be looking at that data over the next few days and making a judgment on that by the end of this week.

You're absolutely right that case rates are plummeting, which is great. And it was very interesting of you to ask about lifting restrictions and why aren't we lifting them earlier. Well, the reason is because we're still at really high rates. Now, they're much better than they were a week ago, but we're still at 572 cases per 100,000. Now, if we were in that situation in the middle of August last year, we'd have been throwing our hands up in the air, saying, 'My God, these are high rates'. So, we've just got to just be aware that we're not out of the woods on this yet. These are really, really high rates still; they're just not as high as they were a week ago. And I do think that as to asking did we overreact, I've got to tell you that our initial analysis, and it is very much initial analysis, does suggest that, although about 170,000 people in Wales had COVID at one point—that's enough people to fill the millennium stadium about two and a quarter times—had we not brought in restrictions, we'd have had an extra 69,000 people with COVID. So, that's enough to almost fill the millennium stadium again, had we followed what happened in London with them reaching the kind of rates that they got to where they didn't put any restrictions in place. So, that's our initial analysis. I'm hoping that we'll be able to do a bit more number crunching around that. And, obviously, it is appropriate for us to analyse after the event—you're absolutely right. We are very keen to learn—we're all learning here. This is a new variant; nobody had heard of omicron only a month and a half ago. And so, what we were doing, we were depending on modelling that was using imperfect data to address and to determine what that modelling looked like. So, we did peak earlier than expected, we didn't see as many hospitalisations as we had feared, so some of that modelling, perhaps, wasn't where we thought it might be, but in a good way, but also what that means is that, actually, had we followed some of the judgments that people were asking us to consider, which were to lock down even further, that may have been an overreaction. But I think we got it just about right, and obviously time will tell if we got it just about right. But what I can tell you, Russell, is that the people of Wales think that the First Minister of Wales is comfortably the most popular leader in the United Kingdom. So, his judgment is something that the people of Wales certainly appreciate. Boris Johnson was on about 39 per cent—how the hell he got 39 per cent is beyond me—but Mark Drakeford was well ahead of him and even Nicola Sturgeon on 57 per cent, so very pleased to see that.

The other points you made were on living with COVID. At some point, yes, you're absolutely right, we've got to live with COVID, but I think there are some issues that we need to consider. One is the waning of vaccinations, which is something that we're not quite clear on with omicron yet. So, we haven't seen to what extent that booster will be protecting us in future and the other thing is, potentially, another wave that will come. Most of the waves we've had have another wave that follows them, so, who knows, is there going to be another wave? So, we've got to live with it, but how we live with it, to what extent we live with it, who do we protect and how do we protect them, all of those things are things that, clearly, we are having constant discussions on.

On the digital certification, the systems between England and Wales speak to each other quite well; the systems between Wales and Scotland don't. So, there's constant work being done on that: it is difficult. The apps—. It's not a Welsh thing, this, the English apps don't speak to them either and, actually, most of that digital work is being done on our behalf by the UK Government, so maybe, Russell, you could ask them to help us out on that as well. But, certainly, we are hoping that we can get a better situation on that. The booster does show on the COVID app, but it doesn't show on the QR code yet, but I think that's supposed to change around about 6 February.