NEW VACCINE ROLLOUT IN AUTUMN?
First Minister warns Wales may need to jab again:
First Minister Mark Drakeford has given more details on what the next few months are likely to look like in terms of coronavirus restrictions. On the same day that he announced a lifting of the ‘stay local’ rule, Mr Drakeford also revealed what household bubbles will look like by the end of April and that there may be a second Covid vaccine rollout in the autumn. Welsh affairs editor Will Hayward reports
WILL Hayward: People seem to agree that a third Covid-19 wave is inevitable. But can you paint a picture of how that looks? If the majority of adults are vaccinated by then, and almost all those particularly vulnerable, will there be fewer restrictions in place even during a new wave? Mark Drakeford: Vaccination will help us deal with a third wave but it won’t be sufficient by itself. It will still require us to do all the things that we do now to keep one another safe. But we know that we are very close to completing an offer of vaccinations to those groups who are most likely to fall seriously ill that they need hospital treatment.
That will make a difference to the management of coronavirus in the community. I am always reminded by the scientific and medical advisers that the more virus that circulates, even if people are not falling seriously ill, increases the chances of variants occurring.
It is not a risk-free option to just say that we can tolerate circulation of the virus just because fewer people are being seriously affected.
If there are new variants, how quickly can vaccines be tweaked to combat them and do you envision a second vaccine rollout in the autumn?
We are right to be worried by variants because of the upswing in numbers we are seeing on the continent of Europe, where there are significant rises in France, Germany and Italy.
The South African variant and the Brazilian variants are undoubtedly in proper circulation there. We have managed to keep those out of Wales so far, but we are right to be concerned when we see them coming as close to this country as they are now.
What the vaccine manufacturers say is that by the autumn they will have tweaked the vaccines. I’m told it is much easier to tweak vaccines that are already established than to create a new vaccine. They say that they will have vaccines ready for the autumn if there are new variants.
So will there be a second vaccine rollout in the autumn?
Yes we are having to think already and begin to plan for the possibility that we will need to go on vaccinating people in the autumn. I am not saying that it is bound to happen, but what I am saying is that as a responsible government we need to prepare for that and we are making those preparations already.
The epidemiologist Tim Spector from Kings College London has said once two people have received two doses of the vaccine they should be allowed to mix together inside. Is this something you are considering?
I hope to be able to consider extended households in the second half of April by which time we are confident we will have completed the vaccinations of the top nine priority groups and will be moving on to people who are further down the list, in their 40s for example.
If we are able to complete the vaccination of the adult population by July as we had planned, and this all depends on supply of course, then the chances of people being able to meet indoors will be undoubtedly and inevitably improved.
What about two people who have been fully vaccinated now, will they be able to meet soon?
Not immediately. At the moment the advice we have is still that meeting outdoors is by far the safest way to meet and that we should stick with the arrangements we are putting in place, but as I say, providing the vaccination programme continues to be a huge success and goes from strength to strength, and we can keep the numbers down then the chances of people being able to meet indoors will be weeks away not months away.
If we allowed people to meet indoors once they have been vaccinated then we are heading into a debate into vaccination certification and vaccine passports.
How else would you know that someone has had the two doses?
You have indicated that after April 22 you would consider reopening gyms and outdoor hospitality as well as introducing single person bubbles. Will this happen all in one go or will it be gradual in the three weeks leading up to May 13?
I think the best guide to the future is the way we have done things already.
Right now we are in the third week of the current three-week cycle and we have brought things in week by week starting with the return of more children to school, the reopening of hairdressers, then moving onto nonessential retail and the lifting of the stay local rules in the third week.
If you do things one at a time it’s easier to see that, if the numbers were to rise, what the cause of that was. That is the way we have done it so far and have taken no decisions about the second half of April.
If advice to us continues to be “do things separately” then I imagine that is the advice we will continue to follow.
Providing cases stay low after level three, we will go into level two. The Coronavirus Control Plan published by the Welsh Government suggests that we could go into that level as one and not in phases. When can we expect the earliest for this to happen?
You are right, that’s how the plan is drawn up. I have always thought to myself I wouldn’t want to arbitrarily hold up lifting some restrictions if the conditions at the time allowed it to happen.
Beyond level three there will be the further reopenings of hospitality, more meeting of people indoors, allowing people to go back to the cinema for instance and people attending sporting events.
There is a long list beyond the end of April and we will do our best to restore those freedoms as rapidly as we can and as safely as we need to.
So we will not be seeing a wholesale move to level two in the middle of May?
No there will not be a wholesale reopening, but there may be aspects of it. I don’t want to hold back measures if it was safe to do so just because we couldn’t do everything.
Theatres have been closed for over a year, but under the latest plans are within the same bracket as cinemas. Could we be seeing theatres opening in level two?
We are hoping so. We will learn from the trials we had with Theatr Clwyd and there were further trials planned in England that we will learn from as well.
You have to take into account the different risks in different contexts. Peo
ple talking to you from the stage is not the same as watching a film where people are not actually breathing out at you.
People have worked so hard in those sectors to put safeguards in place and to think about how they can get back to live performances in a way that will allow actors and audiences to stay safe. Of course we want them to be open again but nobody should believe that we will be back in one go to allowing 2,000 people to gather together.
Are you still considering reopening modern gyms with good ventilation first?
Work is ongoing on that at the moment. I haven’t seen the results of it, but that was building on advice the Technical Advisory Cell published which did say that there was a case for not regarding all gyms as the same.
We are talking to the sector and seeing whether it might be possible to reopen them in a phased way, or whether even smaller venues with enough notice can put ventilation and restrictions on numbers in place which will allow them to safely reopen as well.
What form will the household bubbles take in late April? Will it be just two households forming together?
That is where we would start and that is where we were back in the autumn.
Single-person households have already been able to form an extended household and will be able to travel to self-contained accommodation as well this weekend. The step after that is to have two households be able to join together and meet each other indoors. They will then act, in effect, as a single household.
If a single person has already bubbled with another household, will they and their current household be treated as one household and be able to bubble with another? If someone has bubbled with their Nan
who lives alone could that household form another?
I don’t think we’ve made a decision on that. I can see why there would be a case for saying that in essence a single person with another household is already one household, which could then form an exclusive household with another household. I guess we’ll get more detailed advice on whether that would be possible.
Can you give any more clarity to restaurants? Could they not open before pubs considering a recent PHW study suggested they were lower risk?
Outdoor hospitality including restaurants are on the table for discussion during the second half of April. As ever you would want to see how that went, wouldn’t you?
You will want to see whether that has been managed successfully. The next step would be to allow indoor hospitality.
I think there is such a tension here between wanting to fine-tune the rules against the advice you have while trying to keep a clarity of message and helping the ability of people to understand what the rules are.
I am not sure where the balance would come if you tried to distinguish between different types of hospitality.
Given that in the summer you reopened indoor hospitality a month after outdoor hospitality, is it unrealistic to suggest that it may be reopened a month after again this time?
I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think that, no. What our own scientists say is that you need three weeks to fully assess the impact.
You’ve got to think carefully about that advice and not rush over fences.
Given the cases are currently very low, the R rate is no longer a useful measurement as it is so volatile. What are the indicators you are looking at and what would make you put the brakes on reopening?
It is a basket. There isn’t any one thing, but the things we look at everyday are the number of people falling ill per 100,000. But we also look at it differentiated by geography and age.
I have it in front of me right now. It tells me every local authority in Wales, about whether the numbers are going up and down and on the other side of the paper I have it broken down by ages 25 and under and 65 and over. These are the canary in the mine. If you see things changing here you know there’s something you need to pay attention to.
The same sheet looks at positivity across Wales for every local authority and the different age groups. That is another day by day indicator.
We also have daily figures for the number of people in hospital, being admitted to hospital and those needing critical care. They are lagging indicators and we look at those figures.
They are especially interesting at the moment because, regarding the number of people being admitted to hospital, we now think we are seeing the results of vaccination.
The slowdown in the number of people being admitted to hospital we think is showing that those first four groups who have been vaccinated are seeing an impact.
Every single day we pore over those figures.