One in ten GPs in Wales are off work due to coronavirus, the First Minister has said.
Mark Drakeford said they are all off due to the Delta variant, which shows how worrying the Omicron variant could be if it continues to spread at the rate currently being seen.
It was announced today that all available NHS staff will be moved to help with the vaccination programme.
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He was asked by Conservative MS Andrew RT Davies what modelling is available about Omicron's impact on Wales.
"At the most difficult part of the spectrum we could see largely elevated numbers of people needing help from health and social care services, meeting a service where there are fewer people available to provide the help that is needed because those members of staff will be exposed to the impact of the Omicron variant alongside everybody else.
"Now, the good news is, is that in those populations, we already have very high coverage with a booster vaccine, so that will protect that workforce but if we see a very large wave affecting very large numbers of people and people working on health and social care system will be swept up in it as well. Even today 11% of our GP workforce are not in the work because of Delta variant of Coronavirus.
"If you extrapolate that and imagine what the impact of a Omicron wave of the sort Chris Whitty was describing to the UK cabinet, then you can see that the impact is potentially very significant. All of that is being modelled for the work that we do is from the university and with our local health boards."
Mr Drakeford said people have to come forward and to not rearrange their appointments when they are offered them or it will delay the whole rollout of the booster programme.
"If there was a single message I could get across, there' s nothing more important that any person can do than to keep that appointment they are offered. The more people take up their appointment and the fewer days we'll need in the new year to complete the programme.
He was also asked about a study released today about the impact of vaccines on the Omicron variant.
Mr Drakeford said: "It's the first study of its kind, but it is inevitably—as I think that he himself suggested—therefore preliminary. It tells us something about the early period. It doesn't tell us yet about what happens as the omicron variant takes hold and as more information emerges on the progress of the disease. It's also a study in a South African context, which is different in many ways to our own. So, it is encouraging in its way, but not to be relied upon as a strong basis for policy decision-making.
"There is a sense in which the issues that it reports—the severity of the illness and the extent to which it escapes the current vaccines—are second order questions. If the transmissibility of the virus is of the rate that we are currently seeing in Scotland and in London, then even if it is milder, and even if there is a slightly better efficacy of the vaccine, there still will be a very, very large number of people falling ill. And, a percentage of those people will fall seriously ill, and those large numbers will drive people into needing the help of the NHS."
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