 Good afternoon. Today, in giving the coronavirus update, I want to update you in particular about the impact upon NHS Wales. The situation in Wales is very serious. Our health service is under considerable and sustained pressure because of the number of people who need to be admitted to hospital for treatment with coronavirus. Rhaid urnes chi'n gweld i'r rheswm adeiladol o'r coronavirus bandwyr Cymru. Wrth gweld i'n meddwl yma tyfyn nhw'n gwisio cyllidion cyhoeddioli, cysylltu sydd wedi ei wneud dda'r defnyddio. Rai'r ddaf ateb yn cysylltu bod ddau hynny, fe allwch chi'n gweld i'r case rheid divinell nhw yn ddau o sy'n siarad roedd yn llwy fwyllgor. Fygี่w chi'n fyddwyd o eich trôlioniaid ar gyfer coronavirus ar y rheswm ddweud. Y rhan fydd erbyn am 8 o'r clwp o'r thought. ydych chi gael yn gweithio a oedden nhw'n 400 ychydig o ddweud o 100,000. Mae'r ddweud o'r ffordd o'r maen i arleidio. Yn ystod, mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio yn 500 o blaenau Gwent a'r gweithio'r 600 o'r blaenau i Llywodraeth. Mae'r gweithio yn 19 o 22 yw ddwylo ddweud o ddwylo i Wales. Mae'n gobeithio i fod oes o wrth digon arall o'r cronavirus yn y cymrydau a wedi cymrydau i gyd angen i gael y cyf купau ar hyfrifiadau hyd wedi'u ei gael. Ynddyn ni'n gofyn i'r cyfrifiadau'r cyfan yng nghyrchu cyfion heddiw yng Nghyrchu Ac yn y cwyrdd â'r cyfrifiadau ar hyn ar gael. Y cyfrifiadfa gweithio'r cyfrifiadau posts o'r cyfrifiadau haynno consortio'r cyfrifiadau. Yn y gall, mae'n gweithio'n cyfrifiadau cyfrifiadau a hyfrifiadau gyda eraill o'r wlad rhyngw beneficial hon. Felly mae'rdu bwysig ar ein bwysig rwy'r rôl cyfnodol gwheillion ar y Whales. Mae'r holl gwaith oherwydd a dros y fath yn rhan fwylo chi ddych chi'r wlad rôl cyffredig. Y bwysig ar gyfer hynny mae ychydig rydych chi'r gweithio gylaetholol fywyr rh lyfr. Rwy'n mewn i gweithio gweithio bwysig mewn gweithliadau. Ond oes i gwaith hwnnw sydd yn gobeithio ar y cwylwch, oherwydd ar dweud trefwyd o'r holl. Dwi'n gwneud o'r hollau yn gwneud yn dod i gweithio a gweithio'r cyd-oedd. Efallai yma ar gweithio'r unrhyw ymddangos yma, ond y pethau'r gwrth cyfnod yn ymddangos yn ddiwedd i gwybod yn ymddangos yn nefydd, ac yn ymddangos yr oeddaf o'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n gweithio'r gwaith arall yma ar gyfer yma o'r gweithio'r gweithio. felly o'sill yn y ddiwyloeth 4. The Northern Ireland was between lockdowns a the Scotland was tightening its restrictions. We strengthened coronavirus restrictions here in Wales in response to this incredibly serious situation on Friday, to slow the spread of the virus and protect people's health. Just like the firebreak period, we will not see the impact immediately. Felly ei fod yn ddweud o'r cyfnod yn gwneud o'r ddweud, a hynny'n bod mae'r cyfnod yn gwybod. Mae'r cyfnod o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r cyfnod yn gweithio'r virus. Mae'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod yn ymdwylliant o'r coronavirus oedd yn ei ffaint o'r wneud o'r gwybod yma. A fydd yn ymdweud yn cael y cyfnod yn ymddwynt o'r NHS. CVs yn fawr i ddatblygu ymlaesol ar nosen nhw i y braking sy'n tu fynd i mid anghyddŷnol hwnnw, a fwydiad sy'n stemwch am fawr nifer o'r pwyllteb sy'n siarad yn y mwylo gyda'r diwrnod sydd. Nawr, y toriod yn newydd CTVd, rydym yn ddiddordeb sydd gyda'r mwylo gyda'r gyrtaeth sy'n defnyddio gan weithio, ac mae hynny yn umdweud i ddim yn wneud y mwylo ei addysg yn gwneud gyda'i diwrnod ynghyr ar y newydd. I want to take him up to personally thank all of our health and care staff for their ongoing support and extraordinary commitment during the pandemic. We have asked so much from all of you this year and we will continue to rely on your professionalism, dedication and compassion throughout this winter. I want to thank you for everything that you have already done and everything that you will continue to do to help keep us safe. We recognise the dedication of our staff and the need to invest in the future. That is why next year I will be investing a record £227.9 million in training and educating our next generation of health care professionals and medics. This represents an 8.3% increase on last year's education budget and will support the highest ever number of training opportunities here in Wales. A well-trained NHS workforce with the right skills is essential to provide the high quality care that people need and to prove standards across our NHS. We have a strong track record of investing in education and training to support and sustain our NHS workforce. The health service now has more people working in it than at any time in its history, all named at prevention and care for members of society in each and every community across Wales. Our health and care services have never been more important to us than they are today. Before I take some questions I want to say a few words about the importance of self-isolation. If we are going to be successful in controlling the spread of the virus we need everybody's help. One of the most important things we can do is to stay at home and self-isolate if and as soon as we have any symptoms of coronavirus. These are a high temperature, a new or persistent cough, a loss of or a change in taste or smell. We should arrange to have a test after we started isolating and not before. We should also follow any instructions from NHS Wales, test, trace, protect, the contact tracing teams if we are told to self-isolate because we have been in close contact with someone with coronavirus. I know that isolating isn't easy. We ask everyone to do this because the evidence suggests that we are at our most infectious a couple of days before symptoms appear and a couple of days after. The self-isolation £500 payment is available to help people on lower incomes and the statutory sick pay top-up is available to social care workers who have to self-isolate. We will be extending the £500 payment scheme criteria for next Monday to include parents and carers on lower incomes of children who have to self-isolate because of an outbreak of coronavirus in their school or childcare setting. This will provide parents and carers on low incomes, with the financial support that they will need to look after their children. Thank you very much. I'll now take questions from journalists as usual. We've broadcast the answers live on all of our social media channels. The first question today is from James Williams at BBC Wales. Thank you very much, Health Minister. How seriously are you considering another lockdown if or not? If not, can you just explain why not? Because all of the indicators suggest we're in a much worse position than we were in when you justified the short lockdown over October and November. Just trying to follow the logic here. Well, we've introduced further restrictions last week and, as you know, James, I spent much of the last week having to answer questions about why new restrictions were put in place at all. We have a debate this week with the Welsh Conservatives calling for those restrictions to be removed through a very odd position of a much more contested environment and rising harm being seen. And we know this is much more about the choices that we're all making about who we see, how long we see them for, each of the choices we make about our lives. Now, we're actively considering each day whether the measures we have are the right ones in place or not. We're committed to a review of the regulations in the next week and a half or so and whether to consider what we do. And as I've indicated in my statement today, we're actively considering what we're going to need to do, what we may need to do after the Christmas period. So we're working, trying to work with each of our partners in Wales, different organisations with a key partner of the public. And so if we're going to be able to get through not at the end of the year, but into the next year with a minimum amount of harm, and isn't just the choices we make in the government, it's the choices that each of us make about how we live our lives, it will determine how many of us are here in the new year and beyond. So are you considering any action before Christmas? And can you just explain if there's any discussion in government about the Four Nations Christmas approach, given that Wales at the moment is an outlier in terms of the UK nations? Our case rate is way higher than that in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. And yeah, we're going into a Christmas period that you have already recognised is going to probably lead to more spread of the virus and we're going into it in a worse position than the other UK nations. Well, that's exactly why we introduced restrictions at the end of last week, James. It's exactly why we did that, because we can see that we're headed in the wrong direction. And as I say, I spent in the interviews that I've done in the last few days having to explain why we're doing that and subject to really fierce criticism. You can understand where hospitality businesses are upset because the restrictions have a real impact for those businesses. But we see from the figures, we see from the reality of where we are, that if we don't have restrictions at work and can help blunt and then reduce the growth of coronavirus, then more people will come to harm. So we of course reorder the data and if we need to act at a different point in time, then we will do. But this is really a message for each and every one of us in Wales about what we are prepared to do, about the choices we make and about how many people we see, how long we see them for and what we can do to take care of ourselves and each other. Because the rules that the government could only take us so far, it's then about the choices that we all make. If we need to act further, then we will do because we're still committed, as you'd expect, to do everything we can to keep Wales safe. Thank you, James, and I've got Adrian Masters from ITV Wales. Thank you, Minister. I wonder if you could clarify the vaccination priority list. Steps have been taken in other parts of the UK to ensure that care home residents are in the first batch, despite the logistical problems or the storage problems rather. Can you say if similar steps have been taken here in Wales? I've had a meeting earlier today and I've been having conversations with my officials and indeed there was a conversation with Pfizer earlier today in which I took part in. Well we are working not just with Pfizer, we're working with our officials here and we're working with the regulators to understand how we can safely and lawfully deliver the vaccine to care homes. That won't be tomorrow and I thought it was really important to be upfront about that when I made the announcement last week in my written statement to indicate that from tomorrow we won't be able to deliver this vaccine to care homes. Now the stability data, the data that tells you about how long you could have this vaccine stored at sort of fridge temperatures once it's been taken out of the ultra low freezer, well that's really important to get approval and agreement from the regulators about what we can do. Now other parts of the UK have indicated that they think they'll be able to deliver it before Christmas. I want to be independent, we can give a rather more definitive date about that and at present those conversations with the regulator are not complete. So we'll follow the priority list given by the JCVI with that important caveat that at this point and certainly tomorrow we won't be able to deliver the vaccine to care homes but we will vaccinate in accordance with those priorities not in the first batch but of course the subsequent batches that we expect to get through the month of December. Thank you and could you say as well that during this critical time in the talks with the EU and with the transition period about to end what concerns you as a government have about the supply of medicines to Wales including Covid vaccines and what steps are being taken to try to ensure the smooth running of them? Well my concerns about medicine supply are the ones that I'd have had when we had this conversation previously in the run up to potential no deal scenarios when Theresa May was a prime minister. On a four nations basis we've looked at different medicines, our chief pharmaceutical officers have worked with each other and with providers in the pharmaceutical industry to try to understand where there might be shortages and to try to have alternative arrangements but there is no getting away from the fact that disrupting our ports could disrupt supplies. That's why pharmaceutical companies themselves have looked at different ports of entry so they're not so reliant on Dover and Folkestone and they've taken that into their own hands and remember the previous challenges over ferryless ferry companies and where they could rely on the UK government to put all of those arrangements in place but the disruptions into supply may not be there on day one but there's a challenge about longer term arrangements and that's still to be worked through because the unavoidable truth is in the broader arrangements we still don't know where we're going to be that uncertainty is really unhelpful when it comes though to some of the medication that we know that we need to have and cannot possibly be held up in our ports because otherwise it would lose its effectiveness whether it's nuclear medicine or indeed the COVID vaccine then the UK government have made arrangements to fly those into different parts of the UK. That obviously comes with an extra cost but it would simply be wholly unacceptable to have COVID vaccines held up at ports and then become ineffective and not able to be used so the UK government have had to make those alternative arrangements. I hope that there is a breakthrough and a deal is agreed but I also hope there's a deal more not just common sense but a levelling with the public about the reality of new interrupted trading arrangements more generally and we're all going to have to confront the reality of this not just on the first of January but for the months ahead and it's a hugely unwelcome distraction to winter in the national health service in normal times let alone a winter where coronavirus is very much with us in every community in Wales and causing harm as it goes along so big challenges for all of us and I think that reinforces even more so while we all need to take some control and responsibility for our own choices about how we live our lives, who we see and how often we see them for. Thank you Adam now that Will Hayward from Wales Online. Thank you Health Minister and I want to follow up on James's question. The current UK data shows the coronavirus rate in Wales is nearly twice as high as other parts of the UK and yet as Mark Drakeford said on Friday the current restrictions in Wales are less severe than faced by areas of Scotland in level four and England in level three. Can you explain the thinking behind why restrictions in Wales are weaker when the virus is more widespread? Well as you know we had evidence papers published and we've looked at what Sage has said and our own technical advisory cell have said about what are effective restrictions and we looked at the evidence that tier three in Scotland appeared to work and the alternative was tier three in England and it shouldn't be a surprise that we chose a slightly more generous formulation that Scotland have had over the rules around hospitality. That still is a really significant challenge for the hospitality sector and we know that many businesses will not open as a result and that causes its own set of harm anxiety and understandable upset for people who run hospitality businesses but the evidence that was published does show that the tier three style restrictions from Scotland that we've essentially lifted should mean that we can have a reduction in coronavirus cases but again the challenge comes back to do we focus on an argument about the rules or do we focus on what we should each be doing which is reducing our contact as far as possible to see the fewest number of people possible to see them for the shortest amount of time not to have sustained mixing with other people indoors if at all possible to make sure that the spaces that were in our well ventilated as well all of these things will matter and make a really big difference and as I said in response to James's earlier question if the rates continue to climb and we need to do more we will do but the starting point is we can all do something in the way we live our own lives because the rates in Gwent the rates in these petalwats they're really really high and that means people will come to harm and it puts much greater strain on our national health service and I should point out that doesn't just mean that beds will be full that strain is felt in really human terms by our staff so people need to they're doing the right thing for themselves and each other and doing the right thing for our NHS and the staff who work in it the staff who keep all of us safe. Thank you I've moved on to schools if I may so far the Welsh Government has consistently been on the side of keeping schools open until the end of term given the current rising cases are you considering changing that stance and ending face-to-face teaching early? Well I know that the blinding went and have taken a decision unilaterally outside the agreement reached by both the local government minister, the education minister and the Welsh local government association to maintain face-to-face teaching time and that's partly because we know that significant numbers of schools haven't had outbreaks. We also know from the evidence available to us that primary schools in particular there isn't a significant public health rationale for closing primary schools and in our firebreak we had an approach of blended learning and in person learning so years seven and eight as you recall were in schools in years nine and above had online learning. You have to take into account the fact that the evidence as yet doesn't show that schools cause significant harm that you could reduce and avoid by closing all of them. What we do know though is that closing schools causes real and significant harm to children and young people and their prospects that's both vulnerable children where school is often a safe place for them and you can't avoid or ignore that as a factor in our decision-making ministers are very well aware of that. It's also the direct impact on the mental health and well-being of children and young people in closing schools and we've seen lots of evidence for that as well and we also know that the socio-economic impact means that our least well-off families, our least well-off children and people are the biggest impact on their health well-being and their future life chances as well and that's why we have taken this approach of prioritising schools. It's why in the firebreak we made those difficult choices to close not a central retail and hospitality in the way that we did to maintain schools for all of those reasons and the very practical reality that if we closed primary schools that would have a direct impact on frontline services. All those people who are parents of primary school-age children would have found it very difficult to go to work whether they work in a shop serving us food or they work in our health or social care sector and this I think reiterates that there is never a simple straightforward choice. Every choice we make has consequences. Every choice we make has a downside and every choice not to do something comes with consequences too and in balancing all of these incredibly difficult choices I'm trying to balance each of those different demands and factors and ultimately this is all about keeping people in Wales safe. I hope that most members of the public understand that as we will need to make many more difficult choices in the months ahead. Thank you. Thank you Wilbur and I've got Dan Bevan from Global. Thank you Health Minister. Good afternoon. I want to go back to the Christmas policy if I may. I know that you've spoken about bringing in extra measures if they're needed in answers to previous questions but I wondered if I could ask you directly and get a direct answer from you. Is a fire break off the table after the Christmas bubbles period are believing ending on the 28th? No everything is on the table we're discussing through this week and we'll continue to discuss what measures we need to take. We've learnt that trying to have hard and fast commitments to never contemplate future action is just not the right or the responsible thing to do so of course that's an option that we'll need to consider and we'll of course have advice from our chief scientific advisor on health, our public health experts and of course the chief medical officer for Wales and ministers will then need to decide based upon the evidence and advice that we receive. Thank you and another possible option would potentially be a tiered system at the moment. Wales is the outlier at least in Great Britain in Scotland and England they've got variations of a tiered system. I know the restrictions we've got here have been considered a tiered system but they are Wales-wide they're not comparable to the ones that there are in other parts of the UK. I wondered if that at all is being considered and are the current restrictions that we've got in place likely to stay until the very least when England's end on the 2nd of February? Well Dan there's a couple of points the first is that Northern Ireland have national measures as well across the whole of Northern Ireland so we're not an outlier in that sense and we then need to be honest about comparing Wales and England. England is a much bigger country not just in population terms so tiers in different parts of England the areas that are typically covered are often the equivalent of the land mass or certainly more than the population size of Wales as well so I think every now and again there's this idea that tiers in England are focused down to a community level when they're not and just as we have challenges with different tiers and different rules between the Wales and England border that's very much the case within England too the difference between tier two and tier three areas in England so if you were talking to people in in Cheshire and people in the Manchester where they've got different tiers you'd have the same issue of what we can and can't do in different parts of England we've chosen to have a national approach and you'll recall before the firebreak we had many conversations and interviews that I did in this very setting where you and other colleagues from the press were reasonably asking me questions about the local approach we had then with local authority style measures and some areas are under a local authority size and whether the public could easily understand what we were asking them to do and much the criticism at that point was when you reach a position where two thirds to three quarters of the country have got a set of restrictions over them why not have a national approach that would be simpler and easier to understand and you'll also recall that our technical advisory cell has published advice on this and when we went into the firebreak one of the parts of the very clear advice they gave us was that we should exit with a simpler set of national measures to aid understanding and to help the public make the right choices that's still very much where we are with coronavirus rising in 19 out of 22 local authorities with extraordinarily high rates we see in some of our local authorities to move back to having a patchwork quilt of arrangements would be entirely the wrong thing to do and I don't think it would be reasonable or responsible and all those people who advocate an entirely different approach need to take into account what would be the impact and the effect would we help the public to make choices to keep themselves and each other safe or would we put more misunderstanding in exactly the way the same way that I think we did that towards the end of October so that's the choice we've made it's borne out by it's supported by the advice we've given that we've published that's the approach we're taking we'll continue to continue to consider and review the approach we take as the evidence changer as the picture of coronavirus transmission continues to change around us and I certainly hope we can have different conversations if we see a sustained reduction in cases across Wales a sustained reduction in harm because ultimately this is still about the number of us who will be alive in the future and how we can make positive choices to do that for ourselves and each other thank you John I've now got Lydia Morris in the daily post good afternoon minister um at the moment it's not clear exactly where the first vaccines will be administered in north wales or when it will be rolled out for the general population so can you tell me which hospitals or health boards will be the first to see the coronavirus vaccine being rolled out and do you have more of a detailed time frame on when the general population can expect to receive this vaccine right so every health board will be vaccinating people tomorrow when we start we'll have some more detail of those arrangements provides the press and the public during the course of the day and ahead of tomorrow and you know that we'll be starting tomorrow and there'll be footage and opportunities of everyone to see those vaccinations taking place but every health board will be providing vaccinations within their area from tomorrow so there's equity across the country but it's important to understand that the first section of coronavirus vaccinations that we'll get I mean that we can provide vaccinations to just under 19 000 people uh with our share of that and that's because as you as you'll know people need a first vaccine jab and then they need a second one to provide them with protection so that's what we'll need to do we expect there to be further deliveries through the month of December and we expect to get our share and to provide people with some confidence that Wales isn't left waiting we are actually the first UK country to receive and have stored our own COVID vaccine allocations they've arrived in Wales they're ready to be deployed from tomorrow everyone will start vaccinating we'll be going in accordance with the JCVI advice that joint committee on vaccination and immunisation that's the advice that we're following it's the advice that every other UK government is following on how to prioritise vaccine delivery so we'll start with our frontline health and care staff people of the age of 80 we can't start with care home residents because of the practical delivery arrangements that though I hope will change over time as soon as we're able to have those issues resolved we will obviously be vaccinating care home residents too and then it's broadly an age categorisation we've been advised to follow with some prioritisation of people who are extremely clinically vulnerable and other people who are more vulnerable being bumped up the list in accordance with priorities people will I think understand for way that the flu jab is delivered across our NHS so that's the process we'll be following I can't give you an indication of when the whole population will be covered when different parts be rolled out because we're reliant on the rollout and the delivery of the current vaccine with approval and there's only one and it'll then be about further vaccine approval given by the regulator and how we then deliver rollout for that so I don't want to be dishonest and try to give people an indication of a time frame that doesn't exist but whenever those vaccines become available in the future we'll be completely transparent and upfront as we have been now about when we get them how we'll deliver them and what that will mean to give all of us more protection and because that hope is weeks and months away that's why I think we all need to redouble our efforts to do what we can to keep ourselves and each other safe and to think about what we should do because a tremendous amount of harm could still take place over this winter if we can't all play our part in helping to keep well safe and many have said that they're considering not having the vaccine because they feel it's been rushed through development and testing what would you say to those people to reassure them and will they have the opportunity to change their mind if they initially refuse the vaccine well there's been no corner cutting in the regulator approval for this vaccine. What our scientific and research community did was they accelerated the research that would normally be done and became their number one overriding priority but still had significant clinical trials and you'll have seen the data about tens of thousands of people who were trialled with results and data that came back and our independent regulator the MHRA gave approval it's really important to point out that approval doesn't get given by a politician if it was me deciding or any other politician in the UK I think many people would wonder if a politician had done something that was in their interest rather than an independent objective assessment process so it's really important to to restate an independent regulator has looked at all the data including the safety data and they've given approval that approval there was not unlimited we've just been discussing the challenges over delivery to care homes and that's because we need to understand more of the safety data about how to move it how to store it to make sure it's still safe and effective to be delivered and that I hope will give people some reassurance that this really is a deliberate process they should have some trust and faith in I think the great majority of people will be queuing up to get protection because they'll want to have that call from the NHS telling them that they've been invited to get their jab to get protected for themselves and each other there are always people who are concerned about new treatments new protections of any kind so this won't be a process we say if you if you decline an opportunity to have the vaccine first time around then you'll never get that again but I'd ask people to think again about the choice that they make for themselves and for other people in deciding whether or not to have the vaccine I think actually when we start to see more people having protection over the months ahead I think that will deal with some people who are concerned but from my point of view when I am told by the NHS that I am ready to have the vaccine that I am in the category of people to be invited I will definitely be having the vaccine myself but I won't be jumping the queue to get ahead of other people so be ready the NHS will call you and invite you to somewhere to have your vaccine or when we get the the jab available for care homes they'll tell that care home and their staff when they're coming to that care home so the NHS will manage and arrange that and when you get your appointment card please keep it in a safe place because you need to go back for your second jab to make sure you are fully protected. Thanks very much Lee it has now got Rob Taylor not Rob Taylor Rob Taylor from rexham.com Good afternoon minister. Rexham y flinch of the highest cases per 100,000 figures in north Wales with rexham back over the 200 per 100k mark. Can you give any insight on what is driving the increase there and if the answer involves geography how does that square with the change in the travel restrictions recently? We actually think this is about community transmission and it's about the choices that we're each making about how we live our lives the number of people we see the range of contact we have and you know that's still underpinning the choices we're making in the government and I hope it'll lead to people making different choices in the future because you're right that we do still see high rates in rexham and flincher compared to the rest of north Wales but we also see rates across north Wales well of in five out of the six authorities that are above the previous 50 mark for action to be taken so there isn't just an issue in northeast Wales even though it's a more significant issue there it's still broadly a problem we have community transmission taking place right across north Wales right across the whole of Wales. Thank you and this morning Welsh Government tweeted that we are aware of rumours being spread about plans for a curfew in Wales these are completely false but clarity was a curfew ever an option considered by ministers be it at cabinet or elsewhere and if so when was that and why was it rejected and you mentioned early that everything is on the table is that everything but that? Well a curfew has never been a response that we've considered in the way I know it this came from an independent member of the senate or a source close to that person it is absolute rubbish we are not considering a a curfew this evening other people have described the restrictions on hospitality previously with closures with at 10 with drinking up time as some sort of curfew I I think that language is unhelpful because when people often think about curfews they often think about a whole restriction to leave your house after a certain time and there hasn't been evidence presented to us that would be an effective public health measure so no it isn't something the government's considering we've got plenty of things to do about things we have to get done about challenges we have about what we want people to do to protect themselves and each other without getting into attention seeking fantasy. Thank you Rob and I've got Tom Magner at Caerys World. Thank you Minister. Two days ago the little democrat leader Ed Davie wrote to the health secretary Matt Hancock calling for unpaid carers to be included on the priority list for coronavirus vaccination saying that they mustn't be forgotten and ignored. June last Wednesday's press briefing Dr Gillian Richardson seemed to suggest there would be an announcement coming on vaccine priority and unpaid carers. Hamoud suggested an optimistic note I've followed it up but heard nothing further. Our viewers are anxious to hear what might can you shed on Dr Richardson's suggestion of an announcement on vaccine priorities and unpaid carers? Well I can't give any more than that Tom because we need to get that advice on the JCVI. I think to be fair you've also asked me this question in the past and so it is about understanding the rates between the carer and the person they care for and to understand if actually it would help the person they care for and to protect them as well. So we're looking for further advice from the JCVI because again I think that objective advice is really important to maintain trust in the choices that we're making in each of the governments in the UK. As soon as we have that advice and we're in a position to provide an update then you'll definitely hear about it Tom. Thank you for that. The reason I keep asking is because it's probably the number one topic for our viewers at the moment and what they're saying is that if the unpaid carer falls or succumbs to the virus it's not just their health that's at issue it's the health of the person they're caring for so it's a double effect and with the worsening situation in Wales and not wanting the risk of the NHS being overwhelmed isn't it a compelling argument irrespective of what the JCVI say? Yeah look but the point here Tom is that if we have a situation that is led by not independent objective advice on how to provide the greatest protection for our most vulnerable in the population but is led by different forms of advocacy and pressure on ministers then you'll start to see inconsistency. You'll see people not trusting in the reason why we're choosing different people to come forward first for the vaccine and I think that would actually lead to less trust and confidence from the public. So yes I do think it's important that we continue to take advice from the JCVI and I would need an extraordinarily good reason not to follow that advice. I do take on board the reality that unpaid carers have a particular interest in their own health and what that then means for their ability to care for other people I really do understand that so I'm not unsympathetic at all to the argument that you make but I need to see and understand that objective advice to think about how we protect the whole population and how we keep our most vulnerable as safe as possible. So I'm playing a straight bat because I want to be honest with you Tom as soon as we get different advice you will definitely hear about it whatever that update is. Thanks very much for timing your questions again today I will no doubt see all of you fairly soon.