Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:02 pm on 25 January 2022.
Well, I think there are many downsides to that strategy. I don't have the evidence that the Member refers to; I don't know what he means by many people going private, and I certainly don't recognise the view that it is generally held by patients that GPs are not the right people to provide the help that they need. The English centres are now so overwhelmed by referrals that there are waiting lists as long as long COVID. So, simply setting up a centre is by no means guaranteed to provide the solution that patients need. And I've always believed that if you are suffering from long COVID—. Adam Price was right when he said that 51 per cent of those people report that really debilitating fatigue is the primary symptom. Now, if you've got really debilitating fatigue and you're told that, in order to get treatment, you have to make a long journey from where you live to a specialist centre far away, I'm not certain that that is the best answer to your condition.
So, the approach we have in Wales is that we want to make sure that our primary care clinicians are as well equipped as they can be to respond to as many people successfully close to their own homes, because of the nature of the condition, and then, where there are people who need a more specialist form of treatment, to be able to provide that through the NHS as well. I'm just not yet convinced that the idea of centres is the right answer for Wales.