North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has hit out at the Welsh Health Minister for dismissing the urgent request of a disabled person with underlying health conditions for the wearing of face masks to be made mandatory in all shops in Wales.
In England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, face coverings must be worn in shops and other specified enclosed public spaces.
However, this is not the case in Wales, where they only have to be worn on public transport.
Mr Isherwood was recently contacted by a disabled constituent with underlying health conditions, who had written to the Welsh Government urging them to reconsider their stance on the wearing of facemasks in shops.
Responding today, the Health Minister, Vaughan Gethings MS, rejected the constituent’s call.
Mr Isherwood has now written to the Health Minister urging him to reconsider.
He said:
“I am very concerned by the statement in your response to my constituent that you must ‘continue to be guided by medical experts and public health authorities. Should their advice change, our policy and guidance will be updated to reflect that’, when human biology and COVID-19 transmission pathways are no different in Wales to elsewhere, but you indicate that medical experts and public health authorities in Wales are providing different advice to elsewhere.
“Of course, as you state, “The use of a face covering should not be seen as a substitute for observing effective infection control measures including self-isolation, hand washing and social distancing”. However: World Health Organization (WHO) advice says face coverings should be worn in enclosed public spaces, where social distancing is not possible, to help stop the spread of coronavirus, and the UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) advises that the public should wear face coverings for short periods in enclosed spaces, including shops, where social distancing is not possible.
“Further, it is now nearly 11 weeks since British Medical Association (BMA) Cymru Wales first advocated the wearing of face coverings by the public in areas where they cannot socially distance.
“Meanwhile, the President of the Royal Society states that anyone in public spaces ‘should wear a mask’ to prevent the spread of coronavirus, where ‘you have to think of it as one leg in a multi-legged stool that holds up prevention of transmission’ and ‘If all of us wear masks, we all protect each other and therefore we protect ourselves’.
“And a paper published last month by The Royal Society, a learned society comprising many of the world's most eminent scientists and the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, found that, overall, the use of cotton masks lowered the risk of infection by 54 per cent and the use of paper masks by 39 per cent.
“The Minister needs to explain to my constituent, and the rest of Wales, why, in this respect, he considers Wales to be so uniquely different from elsewhere.”