Tests closer to home can’t come a moment too soon
IT’S been another week where we’ve seen the virus take more of a hold in more areas – there are now four counties in the north of Wales at the time of writing that are subject to heightened restrictions, which were announced last week.
The local lockdown restrictions in those counties do take away many liberties, such as the ability to form extended households, although I’m pleased that Government listened to requests to allow single households to meet up. We’re fortunate that Ynys Môn and Gwynedd were deemed to have case numbers that are low enough to not need to enforce these restrictions, which is very pleasing, but the warning signs are clear.
We can see the way the virus is spreading, and we must be very careful and aware that it could be us next. This is a reminder that we have to do those things that give us the best chance of keeping case numbers low, such as washing hands – which is more important than ever – and keeping your distance from people, as well as wearing a face covering indoors.
But Government, of course, has to play its part and that’s why as Shadow Health Minister I keep on trying to scrutinise Government on the many facets of its pandemic response as much as possible.
One of those elements is testing, and we know we’ve had trouble testing locally, which is something I’ve constantly taken Government to task on. We can’t test as close to home as we’d like, having to go to Llandudno for a drive-through test – which is too far, really – and I’m asking for the stepping up of more local testing capacity. Government now promise a Bangor centre. Well, it can’t come a moment too soon.
We have to make sure that tests are ready and available quickly, that there is enough capacity for those who need them and that the results come back quickly too so that the tracing teams at Anglesey County Council are able to get cracking on the work of contacting people who have been close to those with positive test results to try and stamp out clusters before they get out of control.
I know that many businesses are still struggling and it has been a very tough time for people. A new package of support was announced by Welsh Government last week, which is to be welcomed, and the eligibility checker was due to go live on Monday, so if you are a business and want to see if you are eligible for the next level of support, look for that on the Business Wales website.
If you have any issues accessing the fund or finding out whether you’re eligible please get in touch with my office on rhun.apiorwerth@ senedd.cymru and we’ll do our best to help you all at this very difficult time.
I’ll leave it there for now but I hope you all have a good week and a good weekend and do what you can to keep Anglesey safe. As always, my last word will be diolch – thank you very much to everybody working so hard to keep us safe and healthy and cared for at this time.