Health Minister: ‘significant amount of testing’ taking place in Wrexham with prioritised results

The Health Minister has said today more work will be needed in relevant ‘community languages’ to ensure some workers ‘understand the advice they are been given and the importance of it’.

Earlier today it was confirmed an incident linked to a factory on the industrial estate had been upgraded from a ‘cluster’ to an ‘outbreak’, as a large amount of testing had discovered 70 confirmed cases of coronavirus.

The formal announcement came at 12:30pm today as the Health Minister Vaughan Gething took to the podium for the usual update from Welsh Government on the pandemic response. As is usual over the last few months we were asking questions of the Minister and took the opportunity to ask about the local issue.

Uniformed personnel assisting with the mobile testing centre while the Rowan Foods factory remains operational earlier today.

We pointed the Health Minister to the lower concern yesterday with just two confirmed cases mentioned, however today’s update seeing that increase to 70. We asked what time frames the positive results covered, and asked how soon it would be known if there was a wider community transmission taking place in Wrexham, as ‘at the moment’ there is no evidence that is happening.

The Health Minister replied: “On testing outcomes within both Wrexham, where we have untaken a significant amount of testing, but also in Llangefni as well.

“We had in an Anglesey 97% of those results came back within a day and it was slightly higher in the incident centred around Wrexham. For those tests, they’re being prioritised as a very fast turnaround.

“It goes back to my earlier points about the need for people if they have symptoms to get a test and self isolate.”

“People really do need to follow the advice that they are given by a test trace protect service, it’s not a way to deliberately intervene in people’s lives because we can do, is is part of keeping everyone safe.

“It’s a much smarter way of actually addressing the problem that we do know exists associated with those two sites in North Wales in particular, rather than taking wider community scale measures.

“We will know if there’s been widespread community transmission for a range of our surveillance data, as well as a number of people who request tests in each of those areas. So if we saw people who didn’t have an apparent connection and much larger numbers around the two sites testing positive, that would be part of the marker.

“Also we would see some of the health surveillance data around GP admissions, around ambulance calls, and indeed hospital admissions too. We’re also investing in a much more extensive wastewater project as well to give us a much earlier indication on the possible spread of Coronavirus.”

“I expect over the next week or so to be publishing more information in the public domain, that sets of the range of surveillance data that we’ll look at, not just in these two outbreaks in North Wales, not just around Merthyr, but across the country to give us that early warning and intelligence service if there is wider community transmission taking place.”

Yesterday it was confirmed that Welsh Government and authorities on Anglesey had discussed the possibility of a localised lockdown there, so we asked if there were similar discussions taking place in terms of Wrexham. We also asked what such restrictions could look like to the public, and if preparations were in place to roll them out quickly if needed.

The Minister said: “I think there’s a number of hypotheticals in there so we have a range of different steps to take. The first is we’ve identified there’s an incident and then an outbreak.

“The second then has been about the way in which our test trace protect services work around those cases to help identify the measures of concern and identity the centre of the outbreaks.”

“We’re in a position then if people follow the advice of our test, trace, protect service and they self isolate, you’ve effectively got a smart and targeted lockdown of the workforce and all of their contacts, where we’re actually concerned around the individual outbreaks.

“We then need to make sure people are following that advice. That’s why providing information in community languages really matters.”

“A number of the people work in this sector are from European countries, and they don’t all have high level functional English or Welsh. So community languages for those groups are important for them to understand the advice they are been given and the importance of it.

“We do of course have powers within the Coronavirus Act that allowed public health officials to enforce that self isolation if we don’t have adherence to it on a voluntary basis following the advice that’s been given. Now, that’s a different step again, and it’s not the first step but that’s a possible extra step if people don’t follow the advice they’re given.

“Then there’s the broader point about community based lockdowns as well. It would differ around the circumstances and each particular case, and the challenge is trying to set broad rules I don’t think it’s very helpful.

“If we’re going to have any localised forms of lockdown that go beyond the test, trace protect service and household isolation, then we’ll need to know what we’re trying to achieve and how far out of that we need to go to achieve the desired result have not seen Coronavirus spread to other communities.

“So I can’t give you a an example of what it would look like in any of those individual cases. What I can say is if people follow the advice they’re given in test trace protect, we will have a smart and targeted lockdown in place already, and that to keep workers and their family safe. They should also keep the communities live in the safe as well.”

Later the Health Minister acknowledged the fact many workers at 2 Sisters in Llangefni live together in HMOs has contributed to the spread of coronavirus – more on that here via www.North.Wales

You can view the full briefing from today on the below video, including the Q&A session:

Yn fyw gyda’r Gweinidog Iechyd, Vaughan Gething | Live with Health Minister, Vaughan Gething https://t.co/zJhkcgzmUl

— Welsh Government (@WelshGovernment) June 23, 2020