The First Minister has admitted in a letter to me that there were no gowns in the Welsh Pandemic Stockpile between June 2016 and February 2020. This comes after the UK Government were forced to admit the same by a @BBCPanorama investigation on April 27th.

This contradicts the claim made by the Labour Health Minister in responding to @adavies4 at the Welsh Govt press conference on April 28th that the Welsh Pandemic Stockpile did include gowns when Coronavirus first arrived in the UK https://www.pscp.tv/WelshGovernment/1OdKrqLAXZyxX?t=11m45s

Labour's Shadow Health Secretary said the @BBCPanorama programme
"exposed government failures to provide our brave NHS staff with the life saving PPE they need." The First Minister's admission surely does the same for the Welsh Labour Government. https://twitter.com/JonAshworth/status/1255194357033914369

NERVTAG, a UK Government body that advises on new viruses, recommended that gowns should be added to the Pandemic Stockpile in June last year. The Welsh Government, like the Westminster Govt, failed to do that by the time the Coronavirus outbreak began.

https://app.box.com/s/3lkcbxepqixkg4mv640dpvvg978ixjtf/file/576265864905

The Welsh Govt says it's not represented on NERVTAG. But it did have a representative on its PPE sub-group when it was formed in 2016. It's not clear yet if anyone in Welsh Govt saw the June 2019 recommendation or if this potentially life-saving advice was withheld

The failure to add gowns to the Pandemic Stockpile in line with expert advice has had very real consequences for front-line staff. The BMA in Wales, for example, says 27% of doctors have reported shortages of gowns. https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/bma-survey-reveals-that-67-of-doctors-in-wales-do-not-feel-fully-protected-from-covid-19-at-work

The Welsh Government might argue that they had gowns in their regular stock so it didn't matter that they didn't have it in their Pandemic Stockpile. But NHS Wales held just 8,792 fluid resistant gowns at the end of January, enough for just two days at the current rate of use.

In his letter to me the FM says "Decisions about the types of PPE to be stockpiled in event of an influenza pandemic were taken on a UK level" We must never make that mistake again. Trusting Westminster to make decisions for us has cost us dearly in this pandemic,. Never again.

I raised all this in the Senedd today. The only thing that I learned that was new was that the First Minister apparently doesn't read his own letters. http://www.senedd.tv/Meeting/Clip/33d89775-860f-46a4-911c-1563055038f1?inPoint=00:17:46&outPoint=00:19:46