Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:20 pm on 8 February 2022.
Thanks very much, Jack. And I know that there are many people who are very focused on this issue, and when you have an illness that is so debilitating, then clearly we need to respond. We have not gone down the route of long COVID clinics, but we're following the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines, and I'll read to you what the NICE guidelines actually say. They say that we should:
'Provide access to multidisciplinary services, if available...for assessing physical and mental health symptoms and carrying out further tests and investigations' and
'these could be "one-stop" clinics'.
Well, what we do is that we have access through the GP to this multidisciplinary team. When you call it whatever you call it, the fact is that we are following the NICE guidelines, and we're very confident that we're doing that. It is important, I think, that we continue to learn from and to listen to the voice of the people who are using the services, and that's why it is important, I think, that people who tried to use a service earlier on in the pandemic recognise that the service has changed significantly and fundamentally in the past six months. And it's really important, if people tried to get that care in the beginning and they didn't get it, that they know that it's available now and that they should go and seek that support.