Rhun ap Iorwerth MS: If I may move on, clearly, the Oxford
AstraZeneca vaccine that has been favoured, because it is more
flexible; it's easier to store and to transport and so on and so
forth. But, as evidence reaches us, from Israel particularly, in
terms of how the virus is transferred by those people who have been
vaccinated, it does appear possible—and this is not a rhetorical
issue, because we need to make...Request free trial
: If I may move on, clearly, the Oxford
AstraZeneca vaccine that has been favoured, because it is
more flexible; it's easier to store and to transport and
so on and so forth. But, as evidence reaches us, from
Israel particularly, in terms
of how the virus is transferred by those people who have
been vaccinated, it does appear possible—and this is not
a rhetorical issue, because we need to make preparations
for all eventualities—that only the Pfizer vaccine would
provide this improvement in terms of transmission. Now,
this is a very new kind of vaccination. This new mRNA
technology is likely to be a prominent part of dealing
with future pandemics. We will need infrastructure in
place that would allow the roll-out of these new mRNA
vaccines very quickly and the need to keep them cold, and
so on. In the midst of this pandemic, does the Government
have its eye on developing that kind of infrastructure
for the future, as well as seeing how quickly it can be
rolled out for the problem that we are currently facing?
(Minister for Health and Social Services):
Well, of course we'll consider the developing evidence base
on the effectiveness and characteristics of vaccines and
the threats that we're looking to combat. I think going
beyond that is rather unhelpful and speculative, because we
need to understand the confirmed evidence, rather than what
may or may not be developing. There is always the potential
for different things to happen at various points in time.
I'm confident, though, that the flexibility and the can-do
attitude that our NHS has shown throughout this crisis is
something that will also help us with future events, as
well.
It's also worth pointing out, I think, that I do think we
should look forward to a more optimistic end to 2021 than
the year we've just gone through, but that doesn't mean
that the year will be risk-free. Even as we vaccinate the
adult population, I don't think people can look forward to
going back to entirely the way things were at this point in
January 2020. I think the challenge is that we're going to
be living with COVID for some time. Once we have
protections from the vaccine, we'll have the changes that
you and I would see every year with the flu, for example,
where different strains emerge and there's a need to
consider how we best protect people and what we need to
build in as a regular part of our infrastructure, and that
will, of course, also feature in how we deal with new and
emerging threats, whether they're from a different strain
of COVID or, indeed, other healthcare threats, as well.
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