Huge effort needed and it won’t be easy

ALL of us want to return to our normal lives as quickly as possible.

We are missing our family, our friends and our work colleagues as a result of the tough lockdown restrictions imposed upon us.

But while they will remain in place in Wales for at least the next three weeks, work has been going on behind the scenes to plan for when many of these measures are finally eased.

Yesterday the Welsh Government revealed a new strategy which sets out how people in Wales can live and work alongside the virus while simultaneously containing its spread. It highlights how “testing, tracking and tracing” measures will need to be rolled out in every Welsh community, and will require each of us to play a part in successfully limiting the harm the disease can cause.

The long-awaited plan includes increasing testing capacity in Wales to 20,000 per day, up from the current capacity of 5,000. It also states that a 1,000-strong workforce will be needed to carry out effective contact tracing of cases.

While the publication of this strategy will be widely welcomed by both those in government and its opposition, questions remain about how it will work in practice.

The Welsh Government has a history for making grand promises and failing to keep them. Two months ago, First Minister Mark Drakeford a target to test 9,000 people a day by the end of April.

However, thanks in part to a collapsed deal with global pharmaceutical company Roche, we are still way, way short of that amount.

According to Public Health Wales (PHW), just 1,087 people were tested on Tuesday, a figure which pales in comparison to the testing being carried out across the border in England.

It could also be argued that this plan lacks clarity about how it will be carried out at a local level, and how quickly testing, tracing and isolating must take place to be truly effective.

While the intention and direction is right in this strategy, the devil is in the detail – and sadly, this plan lacks a great deal of it.

If we are to truly end this lockdown and return to some sense of normality, we will need a mammoth collective effort to identify suspected Covid-19 cases early on, to report them to the relevant authorities as quickly as possible and to use the data available to reduce the spread in a coordinated fashion. It’s not going to be straightforward whichever way you look at it.