TESTING TIMES
QUESTIONS ASKED OVER COLLAPSE OF WELSH TESTS DEAL +++ PM UNDER FIRE OVER ENGLISH TESTING REGIME +++
THE company involved in a collapsed deal to supply Covid-19 testing equipment to the NHS in Wales should have “honoured” the agreement, the First Minister said yesterday.
Mark Drakeford confirmed the firm involved in the deal to provide 5,000 tests a day was Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche.
His comments came as the death toll of patients testing positive for coronavirus in Wales rose by 29 – the highest number reported in a single day.
It means 98 people in Wales have now died from the virus since the outbreak began. The number who have tested positive for the virus stands at 1,837. But health officials have warned Wales’ overall total of infections is likely to be much higher as they work to ramp up testing.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething has said that details about how testing capacity will increase further will be released today.
It emerged over the weekend that a deal had collapsed but the identity of the firm involved had not been publicly confirmed until yesterday.
“We did have a deal, it was with Roche. We believe that it was a deal that ought to have been honoured,” Mr Drakeford said.
“We now have access to a supply of tests from a consortium of suppliers that will give us a considerable uplift in testing here in Wales.
“Truthfully, what I believe patients are interested in is that testing will be available, that staff can be tested and go back to work, and some of the detail of how that came about is not, I think, uppermost in the minds of people who need that testing.
“They want to know it’s there and is going to be available, and available in greater numbers, and we can be confident of that.”
Mr Drakeford said Wales was working with the other UK nations to deliver more testing capacity.
“We don’t want to be competing with one another for scarce resources,” he said. “Working together with colleagues in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England gives us some resilience in the system.
“It doesn’t preclude us from looking for supplies of our own, but this is very competitive.
“Working together is, I think, in the interests of Wales, and of our friends and colleagues in other parts of the UK as well.”
The row over testing has continued since it emerged over the weekend the deal with Roche had collapsed.
Originally, the Welsh Government had planned from yesterday – April 1 – to be able to complete 6,000 tests daily.
By April 7, this was to increase by a further 2,000 tests per day and by the end of April there would have been capacity for 9,000 tests a day.
The Welsh Government is now working with other private organisations, the university sector and the NHS to increase the current testing capacity.
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price welcomed Mr Drakeford’s decision to identify the company involved but said more information was needed.
“We still don’t know why the deal collapsed in the first place.
“It is in the public interest that the Welsh Government and Roche tell us what exactly happened to make the agreement fail,” he said.
“We were told that starting today we’d be conducting 6,000 tests per day.
“But because the deal fell through, only 1,100 tests will now be done a day, a loss of 5,000 tests. That’s a scandal.”
A spokesman for Public Health England said: “The UK Government recently asked Public Health England to establish a partnership with Roche to support increased diagnostic testing in the UK for Covid-19.
“Testing in Wales using the Roche capabilities is due to begin next week.
“Public Health England has agreed with Public Health Wales that any additional testing requirements for Wales required in the meantime will be delivered by us.
“Public Health England did not intervene in any discussions between Roche and Wales.”
And Roche Diagnostics said in a statement: “We maintain that Roche never had a contract or agreement directly with Wales to supply testing for Covid-19.
“Our absolute priority and focus at this time is to support the UK Government and NHS to scale up testing across the whole of the UK, including in Wales.
“As part of the centralised roll-out of testing, we will continue to speak to colleagues at Public Health Wales to move this forward as quickly as possible.”
Mr Drakeford also announced that Mr Price and leader of the Welsh Tory group, Paul Davies, had joined the Government’s Covid group, which meets every Wednesday to receive reports from the chief medical officer and the NHS Wales chief executive.
It came as Public Health Wales confirmed 1,837 people had, as of yesterday, been diagnosed with Covid-19 across the nation, up 274 from 1,563 on Tuesday.
Dr Robin Howe, incident director for the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said: “274 new cases have tested positive for novel coronavirus (Covid-19) in Wales, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 1,837, although the true number of cases is likely to be higher.
“Twenty-nine further deaths have been reported to us of people who had tested positive for novel coronavirus (Covid-19), taking the number of deaths in Wales to 98.
“We offer our condolences to families and friends affected, and we ask those reporting on the situation to respect patient confidentiality.”
The Aneurin Bevan health board continues to have the highest number of recorded cases with 681, a rise of 91 and a third of all cases in Wales
We did have a deal, it was with Roche. We believe that it was a deal that ought to have been honoured First Minister Mark Drakeford
Cardiff and Vale has the second highest number with 640 cases.
In Wales’ daily coronavirus briefing yesterday, education minister Kirsty Williams said the disease could peak at different times in different parts of Wales, but that the actions of the public “are making a difference”.
She said: “We will have to wait and see if the continuation of these measures, and its absolutely crucial that people carry on doing what they can to socially distance and isolate themselves, will be having an effect on the peak of the disease progression in Wales.”
The Welsh Ambulance Service said it had “become apparent” that some people had been withholding information for fear of not being sent an ambulance during the Covid-19 outbreak.
Lee Brooks, the trust’s director of operations, said: “This is incredibly unfair on our staff as it means that their right to enter your home prepared has been removed.”
Meanwhile, Mr Gething said yesterday: “We’ve got over 30,000 people registered as volunteers, and within the last week we’ve had a reach of a 1,000 people a day registering to be volunteers to support people in their local community.”
It had emerged on Tuesday that 1,300 retired health and social care staff in Wales including 670 doctors, 416 nurses and midwives and 194 allied healthcare professional had “answered the call” to come back to work in the Welsh NHS.
In addition, 3,760 medical, nursing, midwifery, paramedic and healthcare students are being brought in to help.
Social Care Wales has sent out 850 letters to people previously registered asking them to come back to work.
Field hospitals are now being set up in different areas of Wales, including the Principality Stadium in Cardiff.
Two hotels in Cardiff will provide rooms to house homeless people during the crisis, as well as two newly completed shipping container schemes in the city’s Ely and Butetown areas.
Assembly Members’ pay, which had been due to increase by 4.4% for the 2020-21 financial year, has been frozen for six months.
The National Assembly’s Remuneration Board, an independent statutory body, said: “The board believes that allowing the indexed salary rise to take place in such circumstances would go against its principle that decisions must be appropriate within the context of Welsh earnings and the wider financial circumstances of Wales.
“It is also of the view that this principle is important in maintaining public confidence at a time of unprecedented challenges for the nation. The board intends to review this matter again ahead of October 2020 to assess whether or not it is appropriate for it to apply the adjustment at that time.”
The Senedd’s first virtual session took place yesterday.
THE UK Government was last night coming under increasing pressure over Covid-19 testing as the UK experienced its biggest day-on-day rise in deaths so far.
Some 2,352 patients had died in hospital after testing positive for the virus as of 5pm on Tuesday, the Department of Health said yesterday, up by a total of 563 from 1,789 the day before.
It comes as Downing Street said more than 2,000 NHS staff have been tested for coronavirus as the government faces intense scrutiny over its policy on testing.
Professor Yvonne Doyle, medical director of Public Health England (PHE), told the Number 10 daily press briefing that 10,000 tests per day were now being carried out and the aim was to get to 25,000 tests by mid-April.
She said the intention was to “get from thousands to hundreds of thousands” of tests for frontline workers in the coming weeks.
PHE has also come under fire over wider testing of members of the public with Covid-19.
It has said repeatedly that most adults who develop symptoms will fully recover and do not need to be tested.
However, many scientists disagree and say it is only through widespread community testing that the UK will be able to track the virus and emerge from lockdown.
Prof Doyle told reporters there was an intention to scale up this sort of testing.
She said: “In terms of mass testing, the testing strategy is to increase the amount of testing done not just in healthcare workers but in the population.
“The rate-limiting step there is not us, it is really whether the tests are valid and then to get that out and about, and aided by technology.
“I think that will change as the phases of this epidemic change.
“We will perhaps use different techniques.”
Until now the focus has been on testing patients in hospital to see if they have coronavirus, with NHS trusts told earlier in the week they should use up to 15% of any spare testing capacity for NHS staff.
England Health Secretary Matt Hancock has now scrapped that cap, telling NHS hospital labs to use all spare capacity to test their frontline workers.
A letter from NHS England tells trusts to “max out” lab capacity to test staff, adding this “means immediate action please to ‘industrialise’ staff swabbing processes”.
It comes as Defence Secretary Ben Wallace becomes the fourth Cabinet minister to have self-isolated due to Covid-19.
The government has blamed a global lack of reagents needed to carry out tests, though the chemical industry in the UK suggested there were no shortages.
NHS staff have expressed frustration that they are being forced to self-isolate just as they are most needed, because tests are not available to show if they are clear of the disease.
Labour’s shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, also called for an explanation on why the UK’s Covid-19 testing is lagging behind other countries.
He said: “Germany are testing half a million people a week, yet we still haven’t hit the 10,000 a day the Prime Minister promised.
“NHS staff are rightly asking if we’ve left it too late to buy the kits and chemicals we need, or whether our lab capacity is too overstretched after years of tight budgets.”
Business Secretary Alok Sharma told the press briefing in Downing Street: “The coronavirus pandemic is the biggest threat our country has faced in decades. And we are not alone. All over the world we are seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer.”
When asked why Germany is able to conduct so many more tests, he added: “We of course want to see where we can learn throughout the process.
“We are looking to create a labbased testing on a scale that is comparable to building the medical equivalent of a car factory. We are making progress and we continue to make