WORKPLACES HIT BY COVID-19 ‘COULD BE SHUT’
WORKPLACES could be shut down by the Welsh Government in the event of further coronavirus outbreaks, the health minister has said.
Vaughan Gething said businesses could be forced to close their doors if there was evidence their operations were driving up transmissions.
Yesterday, there were 642 confirmed Covid-19 cases associated with outbreaks at two food factories in north Wales as well as an incident at a factory in Merthyr Tydfil.
Mr Gething said though transmissions linked with the sites now appeared under control, workplaces would be shut in future if they were “a motor for community transmission” and it would “help to keep people safe”.
He told the Welsh Government’s daily press briefing: “I remain prepared to exercise legal powers to close facilities which pose a public health risk from coronavirus if this is necessary. But the advice that I’ve received to date is that if the measures implemented are followed, then further interventions will not be needed or justified.”
He added: “What we actually understand about both the outbreaks and the incident is we’ve been able to isolate people quickly and promptly, both with testing and follow-up advice in Test, Trace, Protect,” he added.
“And that’s meant that the operation of the businesses themselves hasn’t been seen as the factor that has driven that transmission.”
There are 218 cases associated with the 2 Sisters food plant in Llangefni, Anglesey, which restarted work on Sunday following a phased return by its workforce on Friday. All visitors and workers at the plant are believed to have been followed up and tested.
The Rowan Foods factory in Wrexham has 289 associated cases of the virus, with everyone connected with the site, including close contacts of workers, said to have been offered testing.
And the Kepak factory in Merthyr Tydfil has 135 identified cases, though an outbreak has not been officially declared at the site.
Mr Gething there is “no evidence to suggest any ongoing transmission” at the factory, though an incident control team continues to monitor it.
Meanwhile, Public Health Wales said a further three people had died after testing positive for Covid-19, taking the total number of deaths to 1,534, while the total cases recorded in Wales increased by seven to 15,900.
It comes 24 hours after the NHS trust announced zero new daily deaths for the first time since Thursday, March 19, at which time there had been two reported deaths.
However, as deaths are retrospectively added when they become known, it does not mean no-one died with coronavirus on that specific date.
Wrexham, with two deaths, was the only local authority to have more than one confirmed case, while Caerphilly, Cardiff, Vale of Glamorgan, RCT and Carmarthenshire all had one. The rest had no new cases.
Even though testing capacity stands at 15,000 each day in Wales, just 3,174 tests were carried out on Monday.
Mr Gething described the PHW announcement of zero deaths on Monday as “an important moment on our unfinished journey”.
The minister added that, following closer analysis, there had actually been three days when no-one in Wales had died from coronavirus since lockdown began.
“I hope there will be many more days in front of us where we see no deaths from coronavirus here in Wales,” he said.
Meanwhile, the minister announced that the Welsh NHS would now extend video consultations to pharmacies, dental practices and opticians.
He said there had been more than 6,400 GP video consultations carried out since lockdown, and the feedback from people using the service had been “overwhelmingly positive”.
The service would be piloted in pharmacies, opticians and dental practices beginning this month, he confirmed.
In addition, Mr Gething said he was due to meet officials yesterday to look at the speed with which coronavirus tests were being turned around.
In the last week of June, less than half (49.4%) of results were being processed within 24 hours and 74.4% within 48 hours.
Mr Gething said the speed of the test results made a difference to the effectiveness of the contact tracing system.
“As soon as those results are available, they’re passed onto the ‘Test, Trace, Protect’ service to begin the process of not just notifying that person,
but obviously follow-up contact tracing,” he said.
Last week Mr Gething mentioned that patients in Wales were also now receiving “antibody transfusion” treatment, where blood plasma is taken from people who have already recovered from Covid-19 and then transfused into other patients with coronavirus to help them fight the infection more quickly.
The minister
said the trial had been “very encouraging”, but said it was too early to release any results.
“As and when we do have results, we will want to share, but in a way that is responsible, we don’t want to give people false hope,” he added.
In the past, antibody transfusion had shown to be an effective treatment against both Sars and Ebola, he said.