North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has today called on the Welsh Health Minister to respond to North East Wales ambulance staff fears that lack of ambulance staff testing could contribute to deaths due to Covid-19 in hospitals in North Wales.

Mr Isherwood raised the matter when taking part in today’s Plenary meeting of the Welsh Parliament and told the Minister, Vaughan Gething MS, that ambulance staff in North East Wales are worried that they not being routinely tested.

Speaking from his home in North Wales, Mr Isherwood said:

“I have been contacted by ambulance staff in NE Wales, concerned that lack of ambulance staff testing could contribute to deaths due to COVID-19 in hospitals in North Wales.

“When I pursued this with the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust, their Chief Executive stated ‘for asymptomatic ambulance personnel, testing is deemed neither appropriate nor reliable’ – and their Deputy Chief Executive stated ‘if and when the scientific evidence supports repeated testing of asymptomatic individuals, then it will become Welsh Government policy and will be adopted by us at that point’.

“How do you therefore respond to the statement by the Ambulance staff that although ‘it is of paramount importance that Ambulance crews are protected from the transmission of the Covid-19 virus……most ambulance crews have not once been routinely tested and only symptomatic staff have been given tests’, and that ‘Surely the scientific evidence that necessitates testing for care home staff would apply to ambulance crews who also work in close proximity to the elderly, vulnerable and patients with serious underlying health issues’ who could die in Hospital?”

In his response, the Health Minister  insisted that “the current scientific and medical evidence does not support the wholesale testing of asymptomatic ambulance staff”.

ENDS