MORNING SERIAL
THERE were some reasons for cheer though. A contact informed WalesOnline that the Welsh Government were preparing for a delivery of an enormous shipment of PPE on a flight from Cambodia.
When we contacted the Welsh Government they were determinedly tight lipped about publicising its arrival. This was strange, given the devastating shortages in PPE over the last two months the shipment looked like a remarkable and welcome coup.
The reason for the hesitancy was an embarrassing incident involving the UK government a few days previously. The RAF had sent a plane to Istanbul to pick up twenty tonnes of PPE to replenish UK stockpiles. This had transformed from success to debacle when the plane had, for reasons unknown, spent four days sitting on the runway. According to reports the supplier had contacted the NHS on April 16 claiming it could make the 400,000 gowns and the UK Government had paid a deposit the next day. However, the supplier subsequently announced an unexpected manufacturing delay which reduced the amount of gowns that could be collected.
On arrival in the UK many of the gowns had to be returned as they were subsequently found not to be up to UK safety standards.
Fortunately for the Welsh Government both its flights from Cambodia (containing 200,000 fluid resistant gowns) did arrive as planned as did a delivery of ten million masks from China. These deliveries went a long way to take some of the immediate strain off Welsh PPE stocks.
When you look at Wales and think of the places most at risk from coronavirus, you don’t need to be an epidemiologist to pick out the likely candidates – care homes, hospitals, crowded accommodation.
These facilities all have certain traits in common: human beings in close proximity to each other, people having no choice but to frequently interact with each other, and chronic underfunding.
Welsh prisons provide a similar scenario. Underfunded and full to bursting, prisons in Wales are such perfect conditions for coronavirus they could have been designed by the virus itself.
> Lockdown Wales by Will Hayward £9.99 www.serenbooks.com/ productdisplay/lockdown-wales ISBN 9781781726013
CONTINUES TOMORROW