Harder for Wales to protect against new Covid variant ‘because they’re cutting our funding in England’ says minister
It will be hard for Wales to protect itself against a likely new Covid variant because “they are cutting the funding for us from England,” the Welsh Health Minister has said.
Speaking on Politics Wales, Eluned Morgan was asked whether they would, ideally, keep the free Covid testing regime in place beyond June.
The Welsh Government has already said that it will keep lateral flow tests free for three months longer than England, but Eluned Morgan suggested that protection would be in place for longer if UK Government funding allowed.
“One of the big concerns we have is that we do need to be ready to spring back in terms of protection measures, if we see another variant hitting us in future – and all scientists are suggesting that that is highly likely to happen,” she said.
“So we are reluctant to be in a situation where we can’t monitor what is coming into our societies. There are some monitoring levels that will remain we’ve got the ONS survey, we’ve got the water monitoring, and of course we will keep that testing regime in place for those people working in health care facilities.
But that did not include the free lateral flow tests, she said.
“That is precisely because frankly, they are cutting the funding for us from England,” she said.
“And it will be very difficult for us to maintain and to give those feet free lateral flow test beyond a certain point, simply because they’ve cut off the financial funding for us from the UK Government.”
‘Sicker’
The Health Minister was also asked why Wales more cautious approach had not led o a considerable difference in terms of the mortality rate from Covid, compared to England.
“Because it’s not just about age, the fact is that we do have a sicker population here and Wales as well due to our industrial heritage and, and other issues that affect people here,” Eluned Morgan said.
“And poverty levels. Of course, all of that has an influence on the health of our population generally. And so that’s would explain to an extent why those figures are no different.
“I think what would worry me is if we hadn’t been cautious, imagine what those figures would have been like under those circumstances. So those are the things that we need to consider. We always have to consider that we have an older and sicker population.”
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Labour youth should elbow the greasy pole climbers out!
Cymru should elbow Labour out. Just another OneNation party led by Eng Nats
Once again the Wally of Westminster’s Regime is penny pinching and in hock to the right wing Nutter arm of the Tory Party. Why they seem to think that the Covid Pandemic is over when the figures show that is far from the case is hard to understand. Given the speed with which other more vigorous variants have arrived in the last two years, and givn that the promises to “Vaccinate the World” have turned out to be worthless, the liklihood of something nasty being just around the corner is high. Well done the Minister who is trying to keep… Read more »
Her party leader has implied he would end devolution in favour of devo to towns and cities. EngNat Red Tories, so it is hypocritical to just blame clownshoes for doing the same as they would have done – steal Welsh autonomy.
But Labour don’t support independence and never will (see Scotland and Starmer). So they are complicit and culpable. Two cheeks and all that. I am so sick of their empty whinging, talking out of both sides of their mouth. They like playing things off against the Tories, to make themselves look like the “good guys”, but they will never follow their empty moaning to its logical conclusion because they don’t want real power and responsibility, just happy to be a few irrelevant safe seats for Labour’s England-based ambitions. Having the big bad next door lets them play the scrappy underdog.… Read more »
I agree. Following Starmer’s tacit admission that he wants to undermine OUR referendum, that’s all support for Labour in any form gone so far as I am concerned. Westminster Tories will soon be wanting to “denazify” Cymru no doubt
Reality dawns for Wales. Assuming lockdowns and testing are wonderful, which is generous of me, we then ask a couple of questions. Why should London pay for this Welsh whim when, quite understandably, it doesn’t believe in it? 2nd -Why doesn’t Wales grow up, raise its own taxes and pay for itself? Something tells me that if Wales was made to pay, it would say no to 2021-style Covid measures.
Blaming the poor Welsh Govt performance of the “older, sicker” population is typical. Lateral flow testing by the individual are unreliable and mass PCR costly and slow, so spending huge sums on these tests must be dubious. Eluned Morgan’s fear of an new variant can be met cheaply by PCR analysis of selected sewage samples collected already by Dwr Cymru. She might not know of this method, but one must question the scientific competence of her advisers?