First Minister recognises ‘some difficulties’ at ‘margins’ of outbreak response – claims overall it is a ‘hugely successful effort’

The First Minister Mark Drakeford has said work is continuing to locate and test around 150 further people in connection with the local coronavirus outbreak, around half the number given at an update on Friday.

The First Minister was taking questions as part of the usual Welsh Government weekday lunchtime briefings. The issue in Wrexham had not been directly raised by the five outlets before us, so we asked the First Minister for the previously regular statistical update for the Wrexham and Anglesey outbreaks. At the time of writing the regular Public Health Wales update this afternoon also did not include any Wrexham stats.

We pointed to the previously reported 300 people who were effectively untraceable during a pandemic outbreak in Wrexham, and asked for clarity if they were known and not coming forward, or if the Track Trace Protect system did not know who they were. We also asked for assurances that the situation would be resolved this week.

The First Minister said, “The latest figures that have been published are the ones that were released by the outbreak control teams at the end of Friday. There are meetings of the outbreak control teams today. They will issue further updates before the end of the afternoon.”

“Just to confirm though, at Anglesey there were 210 positive cases as of the end of Friday, and in Rowan Foods in Wrexham, the confirmed cases were 166.”

“In terms of the 300 people who were identified as needing to be contacted in Rowan Foods, half of those have now been resolved over the weekend. Half of them were people who were shielding. So while they were on the books of the firm, they weren’t in work.

“Others are people whose work rotas meant that they haven’t been in work during the time of the outbreak. So we’re down to now around 150.”

“It’s important to just to think a bit about the sector itself. It’s not like say have all teachers in a school been tested, because there are people who work in the meat processing industry who are agency staff, people who work sometimes and not others, people who are casual rather than permanent employment there. There are a group of people who are not as straightforward as others to contact and to trace, but the team will be working very hard to continue now to make an inroad into that further 150 to test those people who need to be tested and to eliminate other people who when they are contacted turned out not to need to be tested.”

The First Minister had referred to Track Trace Protect efforts as a ‘success’ and with a ‘good turn around’ of testing. Locally we have been told that there had been issues with the outbreak response, including translators not being available until Friday, incorrect test results given out, slow turnaround of test results and even some going missing. We asked the First Minister if that was something he was aware of, and what was being done to resolve the issue.

The First Minister replied, “Well looking at the margins of a huge effort like this, there will be some things that don’t happen in the way that the vast majority of things are happening.”

“So most tests are being turned around very quickly indeed. I am aware that as I say, at the margin, there can be some difficulties. One or two tests that came out of the Wrexham factory couldn’t be processed because the label wasn’t sufficiently clearly attached to them, for example, but those are very marginal issues in what has been a hugely successful effort.

“The translation issue is something we will learn from these two outbreaks. There are people employed in both factories whose first language isn’t English. When you’re communicating some sensitive information and where people need to take action on the basis of what you’re telling them, making sure you were able to communicate in the language that is most familiar to the individual is important. That has emerged as one of the things that we’re learning from the handling of both of these outbreaks. We’ll be better prepared for that were we to be operating in a similar context in the future.”

You can view the full briefing and Q&A session on the below video:

Yn fyw gyda Prif Weinidog Cymru, Mark Drakeford | Live with First Minister, Mark Drakeford https://t.co/eHQq0cxBt0

— Welsh Government (@WelshGovernment) June 29, 2020