Minister says Wales "not left behind" in vaccine roll-out

* Health Minister Vaughan Gething gives today's press conference.

Wales’ health minister has denied the nation is “behind the pace” in rolling out Covid-19 vaccines and promised a “significant acceleration” in the coming weeks, reports the BBC online news.

This comes as the number of new cases in north Wales continues to climb,

Giving the Welsh Government's latest coronavirus update Vaughan Gething said he believed the Welsh NHS would have vaccinated people within the “first” priority groups, including care home residents, “at about the same time as every other UK nation”.

Letters going to every household about the vaccine rollout “will provide people with a measure of assurance” and would explain how they would be contacted, he told the Welsh Government press conference on Monday.

Amid concern about the rollout, Mr Gething said he hoped to publish more detail on numbers and “a better indication of how we’re going through all those occupational groups”.

“So I appreciate everyone has questions, but I think that people at the end of this will see that we have not been behind the pace," he said.

“And actually the significant acceleration that we'll see over the coming weeks will give people even an even greater measure of confidence about the coming months.”

* Mr Gething said the number of mass vaccination centres in Wales will be increased to 22 and more than 60 GP surgeries will offer the Oxford vaccine.

He said mobile units would be set up throughout Wales.

Health boards and local authorities would be writing to everyone in Wales with more information about the vaccine in the coming days, he said.

“We are training a range of healthcare workers to give the vaccine and we have plans to work with local pharmacists, dentists and optometrists to provide vaccination clinics.

“We will continue to provide the Pfizer vaccine at the mass vaccination centres across Wales," he added.

“We are working to the priority list agreed by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation. The rest of the UK is working to the same list."

Mr Gething said the immediate priority was to vaccinate front-line health and care staff, care home residents and staff, and people over the age of 80, which would save the greatest number of lives.

He said everyone would get two doses up to 12 weeks apart.

* Schools in Wales will continue with the phased return to face-to-face learning over the first two weeks of the new term unless the "evidence changes", according to Mr Gething.

Teaching unions have voiced concern about sending pupils back to class while a new variant of coronavirus continues to spread.

Vaughan Gething said closing schools remained a "last resort" but added: "If the evidence changes then we'll have to take account of that evidence and that may lead to a different choice."

* OVER 300 new cases of coronavirus have been confirmed across our region by Public Health Wales (PHW) today, reports the Denbighshire Free Press.

There have now been almost 19,570 lab-confirmed cases of the virus from the combined counties that make up the North Wales region since the outbreak of the pandemic - after more incidents were confirmed in the latest figures released today.

Public Health Wales confirmed that the 304 of today’s 1,898 newly confirmed Welsh cases were from the northern region.

They can be broken down as such:

• Anglesey – 14 (20.0 per 100,000 population as of today)

• Conwy – 29 (24.7 per 100,000 population as of today)

• Denbighshire – 62 (64.8 per 100,000 population as of today)

• Flintshire – 91 (58.3 per 100,000 population as of today)

• Gwynedd – 15 (12.0 per 100,000 population as of today)

• Wrexham – 93 (68.4 per 100,000 population as of today)

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board – the largest health board in Wales – has reported 595 people have sadly died to date according to PHW data.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics, which are considered a stronger indicator of the overall impact of the virus, and which are based on all deaths where COVID is mentioned on the death certificate, stand at 773 for the health board area.