Use of Covid pass may be extended
COVID vaccine passes could become mandatory in more places in Wales, Health Minister Eluned Morgan has suggested.
Baroness Morgan yesterday said it is one of three strategies that the Welsh Government will look at this week in a bid to slow and reduce soaring coronavirus infection rates in Wales.
The country currently has the highest infection rates in the UK, the second-highest in Europe and the fourth-highest in the world.
On Friday, the Welsh Government will announce results of its three-weekly review.
Wales is currently in the lowest level of restrictions, meaning all businesses are open. That is referred to as “Covid stable” by the Welsh Government, but its latest plan also has a second stage – “Covid urgent”.
If that happened, it would mean a return to the alert level system and restrictions in Wales.
First Minister Mark Drakeford has previously said such a move would be used “proportionately” and as a “last resort”.
On the BBC’s Politics Wales programme yesterday, Baroness Morgan was asked if any changes to the rules would be made.
She said a move to a higher level of restriction was not currently being discussed, but that other options would be considered, these being:
More people working from home;
How to get more people to wear face coverings indoors; and
Covid Pass use being extended. Ms Morgan said: “We will be looking to see how we can absolutely make the most out of the measures that we already have in place.
“Is there anything more we can do for example, around working from home, which we know makes a huge difference?
“Is there more we can do to make sure that people actually do wear their face coverings in public places indoors? And we’ll be seeing if it may be necessary for us to roll out the vaccine passports to other situations.
“There are a number of issues that we’ll be considering. We’re not talking about moving up the levels at this point, but we will always keep that option open as we head into winter, but hopefully the vaccination will help us to avoid the kinds of lockdowns that we’ve had in the past.”
Covid vaccine passes were introduced in Wales on October 11, despite concerns from politicians and businesspeople.
They show you are either fully vaccinated or have had a negative Covid test in the past 48 hours before you can go to nightclubs, indoor non-seated events for more than 500 people, outdoor nonseated events for more than 4,000 people and any event with more than 10,000 people.
The minister was asked whether needing a Covid Pass was a “real possibility over the coming days”.
She replied: “It’s something that is another weapon in our arsenal that we need to be thinking about. We are looking at any measures we can to bring down the rates that are extremely prevalent in our communities at the moment.”
Meanwhile, latest figures have revealed that more than a third of patients in critical care in Wales have Covid-19.
Speaking on the BBC Politics Wales programme yesterday, intensive care consultant Dr Jack ParryJones said more than 35% of patients in critical care currently have Covid.
While he said that at the worst stage of the first wave it was as high as 90%, he warned that staff are under “enormous pressure” and “standards of care will fall”.
“Every week, our baseline critical care capacity in Wales is 152 beds, which is the fewest per head of the population in the UK,” he said.
“We’re currently running at 123% capacity and, of those, over 35% of them have been taken out with patients with coronavirus infection.”
Dr Parry-Jones added: “The difficulty with Covid is the time it takes people to get better.
“So a quarter of patients with coronavirus will take over 30 days before they get better, so that’s the survivors.
“Those people that die in critical care with Covid, those patients – whilst we’re trying to save them – they still take a significant period of time in critical care. So our staff are under an enormous amount of pressure running at that kind of capacity.
“When you’re running at that kind of capacity, standards of care will fall and we really struggle across the critical care sector with staffing and that’s mainly or particularly nurse staffing, but actually all staffing is extremely difficult”.
Asked if critical care was reaching its limit, Dr Parry Jones said: “We can flex up. So at the worst stage in the first wave, over 90% of patients in critical care had Covid – over 200 patients across Wales.
“We can do it, but the problem is standards fall and it’s very, very difficult for staff.
“And it’s extremely difficult to retain staff when they’re exhausted, so they will leave the service.
“At the moment 36% of the baseline of critical care is patients with Covid, so we really, really need to reduce infection rates.
“Vaccination is incredibly important in doing that, but it’s also each individual’s responsibility to reduce their risk of getting Covid and to reduce transmission. There’s a responsibility on all of us to do that, but the vaccination remains the key for us.
“Unfortunately, for critical care nothing is going to change, it can only get worse for at least a month, because it takes that long for people with infection to become critically ill.
“So whatever happens now, we’re looking at a minimum of a month to two months with this kind of rate of Covid cases in Welsh critical care.”