Covid vaccine 'being delivered with increasing urgency' in Wales

Wales' health minister has insisted there is an "increasing urgency and an increasing pace of delivery" of vaccinations in the country.

Vaughan Gething told BBC 5 live Mark Drakeford had "clarified" remarks made on Monday that there was no point rushing to use all available vaccines.

Mr Gething said on Tuesday the vaccine was not being withheld.

He said the challenge was "having enough infrastructure to deliver the Pfizer jab without wasting it".

"Less than 1% of that vaccine is not being delivered, that's a very, very high level of efficiency," Mr Gething said.

"So we're able to roll out the vaccine in a way that we can deliver more and more of it. This week, we'll deliver even more of our Pfizer vaccine than last week."

He told BBC Radio Wales "big progress" was being made in delivering the vaccine and the NHS "won't let people down".

Mr Gething said he could understand why "an unsettling effect" may have resulted from the way Mr Drakeford's interview "was presented".

"We are going as fast as possible," he said.

"More and more people are being protected - we are at the point where by the end of this week seven in 10 care home residents and staff should be protected, seven in 10 over-80s in Wales should be protected with their first shot.

"We're making really big progress with protecting our staff with their first vaccine. We're doing a really good job at increasing the pace. This is a race against the virus and to recover as much as possible of normal life."

The NHS "won't let people down", he said.

Conservative health spokesman Andrew RT Davies was "sadly" not reassured by the health minister.

He said Mr Gething was trying to clear up the "mess" made by the first minister.

"In some respects the first minister didn't make a mess," he said.

"He spoke honestly about what Welsh Government policy is at the moment."

Mr Davies said he did not accept Mr Gething's defence that things were being done as quickly as they could.

With "whole swathes of the economy shut down", the vaccine was "no good in the bottle", he said.

"It surely is a sprint and it is a sprint to get this vaccine out as quickly as possible to offer people protection against the virus," Mr Davies added.

He said "we all want to see success".

Plaid Cymru health spokesman Rhun ap Iorwerth said confidence in the system was "very important".

"We have this very confusing couple of days where the first minister says categorically they are holding the vaccine back and then, in a few hours, no, we are not holding the vaccine back.

"That kind of lack of clarity breeds confusion."

Vaccine needed to be delivered "as quickly as possible," Mr ap Iorwerth said.

Daniel Altman, a professor of immunology at Imperial College, London, said the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was "unique" because it had to be stored at -70C.

"These things are challenging but they're not insurmountable," he said.

"I watch what's happening in Wales with great interest to see if the numbers really can be caught up. That's the way to beat this and get transmission down."

Bronwen Rashad, of the Wye Valley, Monmouthshire, said her 78 and 81-year-old parents had not yet received vaccine appointments.

"The Welsh Government have done brilliantly with everything else, I don't why with the vaccine it has gone wrong," she said.

She said the situation was causing "a lot of anxiety."

"My dad is really quite stressed about it," she said.

"Friends who have parents of a similar age in England have got their vaccine."