Covid: 'Earlier lockdown in Wales could have saved more lives'

Covid: 'Earlier lockdown in Wales could have saved more lives'

More lives could have been saved had Wales gone into lockdown earlier at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the health minister has said, looking back with hindsight.

Vaughan Gething made the admission while talking about the pressure faced by policy makers dealing with Covid-19.

But he also said he believes decisions were correct based on the information available at the time.

There have been 4,775 deaths with Covid-19 in Wales since March 2020.

There have also been 192,912 positive cases recorded.

Wales went into its first lockdown on 23 March and the Welsh Government came under fire early on for the speed of care home testing, as well as contact tracing.

"Looking back, if we had the opportunity to do this all again, we would have made different choices on borders definitely," Mr Gething said.

"We would almost certainly have entered lockdown a week or two earlier, and we would have probably saved more lives if we had done that.

"I think that actually on the really big and serious choices we have learned lots.

"So if we have the knowledge we have now I would definitely have made different choices at various points in the pandemic.

"We'd have been able to get a jump-start on our testing capacity.

"We'd have been able to make different choices about testing around care homes earlier.

"We did manage to get ourselves into a good position on PPE so we never ran out, but it was really tight at various points in time."

He said the Welsh Government's scientific advisors all agreed the advice given at the time was the correct advice based on the information they had.

However, if they had the information they now possess, the advice would have been different.

Mr Gething admitted being at the sharp end of decision-making at such a critical time had taken its toll.

"If you're having conversation with needing to plan for the potential for mass burial as we were at the start of the pandemic, then you know that really sobers you up very quickly about the scale and the enormity of the challenge we're facing," he said.

"I never really thought that I would have to make decisions that have this sort of consequence.

"We often talk about making life and death decisions but actually the choices we make have an impact on the whole population."

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