A STEP CLOSER ON OUR RETURN TO NORMAL
Not all pupils expected back in class on first day back
SCHOOLS are set to fully reopen today, along with remaining non-essential retail, and some travel restrictions will be lifted.
Close-contact services will reopen and university campuses will welcome back students.
Restrictions on travel in and out of Wales will also be lifted but people will not be able to journey to countries outside the UK, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and Ireland without a reasonable excuse.
IT will take years for the Welsh NHS to recover from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic thanks in part to a massive backlog of patients and new demands on some services.
Although the Welsh Government pumped an extra £1.4 billion into the NHS for 2020-21 in response to the pandemic, this extra funding is set to end in the middle of this financial year.
A new study has estimated that the costs of dealing with post-pandemic health pressures will reach hundreds of millions of pounds for at least the next five years.
Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre has assessed a number of factors and found there will be a significant funding gap between health spending by the UK Government in England and total funding pressures for the NHS in Wales.
The shortfall could peak at £740m in 2022-23, the report said, and could average £360m a year from 2023-24 to 2025-26.
The lack of cash will lead to tough decisions and trade-offs for the next Welsh Government after the Senedd elections on May 6, it concluded.
The study assessed prepandemic trends in NHS spending and underlying spending pressures from an ageing population, as well as the likely significant additional funding pressures for the NHS over the course of the next Senedd term.
The factors considered include:
■ The direct costs of Covid-19 over coming years, such as ongoing costs for the Test, Trace, Protect programme and potential re-vaccinations
■ Productivity losses as a result of social distancing and heightened infection control
■ The cost of clearing the backlog in elective care waiting lists
■ New demands on the NHS, such as on mental health services
Despite ploughing £1.4 billion into the Welsh NHS response to the Covid-19 pandemic, this will not be enough to meet the direct and indirect costs of the pandemic, the report said.
Wales was able to make some savings thanks in part to the cost of PPE and the devolved element of the test and trace system in Wales (£533m) coming in at roughly half the level of consequentials stemming from English spending on test and trace and PPE (£1,084m).
These costs were £158 per person lower in Wales than in England.
This meant the Welsh Government was able to carry forward £500m of Covid-19 funding from 2020-21 into 2021-22. So far, £440m has been allocated for the Welsh NHS Covid-19 costs in the first six months of 2021-22.
Guto Ifan, a researcher on the Wales Fiscal Analysis project, said: “While the Welsh Government appears to be in a position to meet funding pressures this year in the face of significant post-pandemic spending pressures, the outlook for the Welsh budget is relatively austere.
“Current UK Government spending plans contain no Covid-19 related funding for years after 2021-22 and assume NHS spending in England returns to pre-covid-19 multi-year spending plans next year.
“Only passing on health-related consequentials to the NHS would likely fall short of funding pressures but would still entail cutting most other areas of the budget in 2022-23.
“The next Welsh Government will need to balance these additional pressures against huge funding challenges elsewhere and the potential use of devolved tax levers.”