Jack Grey
BBC Wales News

That concludes Wednesday’s coverage of the UK Covid Inquiry – we’re now more than halfway through the inquiry's three-week visit in Wales.

The key points from today were:

• Dr Quentin Sandifer, pandemic adviser to PHW, told the inquiry he was "astonished" that the Welsh government did not consider Covid a “civil emergency” in early March 2020
• Sandifer said that, in the early days of Covid, Wales had an agreement to secure 5,000 Covid tests but 4,500 ended up being diverted to the rest of the UK, something Sandifer blamed on "national politics"
• PHW was “frustrated and concerned” over the speed at which health boards were setting up their Covid testing capacity, before the chief medical offer intervened, said Sandifer

• Chris Llewelyn, chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association, told the inquiry that councils didn't feel trusted by government during the early stage of the pandemic
• Llewelyn added that there was a feeling within the social care workforce that care staff were neglected and not appreciated in the same way as those in the NHS

We'll back at 10:00 on Thursday when we'll be hearing from Jane Runeckles, a senior adviser to the first minister who, the inquiry previously heard, used disappearing WhatsApp messages.

We'll also hear from Welsh government head of press Toby Mason and former Welsh Secretary Simon Hart.

See you in the morning.

Cemlyn Davies
BBC Wales Political Correspondent

Kilpatrick tells the inquiry that the Welsh government would have acted "quite differently” if it had been aware of comments reported to have been made by a senior UK government official on 13 March 2020.

The inquiry was shown a transcript of earlier evidence where it was claimed that senior civil servant Mark Sweeney said the UK was going to be in “huge trouble” because of a lack of a plan to deal with Covid.

"I’ve been told for years there’s a whole plan for this, there is no plan," Sweeney is reported to have said.

Mr Kilpatrick said the Welsh government hadn’t been made aware of those reported comments.

"I think some of our thinking may have been accelerated [had we known]."

The Welsh government did not hold an civil emergency meeting to discuss Covid until 4 February, says the senior civil servant in charge.

Kilpatrick, who headed up emergency response and resilience teams, says that up until that point, the response had been led by the health department.

He says the purpose of the meeting was to start thinking about how to respond across government - bringing together officials from various departments.

The “trigger” for the meeting, he says, was his “natural pessimism".

Image source, Covid Inquiry

We're really getting through them today - that's all from Chris Llewelyn.

Reg Kilpatrick now joins us to see out the rest of the afternoon, he is director general of the Covid Recovery and Local Government Group.

The inquiry previously heard that in 2018 Kilpatrick had raised concerns that the Welsh government was not helping enough with UK pandemic planning.

Care workers felt neglected compared to NHS staff – Llewelynpublished at 15:39 Greenwich Mean Time 6 March

15:39 GMT 6 March

India Pollock
BBC Wales social affairs correspondent

Llewelyn says there was a feeling within the social care workforce that care staff were neglected and not appreciated in the same way as those in the NHS.

He adds that their need for PPE and testing wasn't considered in the same way either.

Is the status of social care secondary to the NHS?

It's a criticism that's raised often by those in the profession and it's one of the themes that's become central to this inquiry.

Image source, Getty Images

Llewelyn says councils were frustrated that they were not invited to contribute to the drafting of Covid regulations in Wales, including those affecting hospitality.

The inquiry is shown a briefing prepared by the WLGA ahead of a meeting with the first minister on 5 August 2020.

In it, the WLGA wrote: "It cannot be overemphasised that our officers have a depth and breadth of experience or knowledge and we willingly offer this in the spirit of co-production.

"Unfortunately, during the pandemic this resource has been overlooked in the planning preparation and drafting of legislation."

Owain Clarke
BBC Wales Health Correspondent

There were “differences of opinion” between local authorities in Wales about introducing a firebreak lockdown in Wales in October 2020, according to Llewelyn.

He says there were differing points of view between "east and west" and "urban and rural" councils. In the end he says they agreed on a common position.

However, in contrast to earlier decisions, he tells the inquiry that the discussions with the Welsh government in the run up to a firebreak was a "model" of how it should be done.

At the start of the pandemic, councils felt that the Welsh government could have shared information with them “more fully, earlier,” says Llewelyn.

He says there was a feeling within local government that all tiers of government were not showing “trust and confidence” in each other.

Asked if there was a felling that councils were being kept in the dark, he says: “I think there was a feeling that information could have been shared more fully."

Image source, Covid Inquiry

After TUC Wales boss Shavanah Taj's brief stint in the hot seat, she's off and Chris Llewelyn is in.

He has been the chief executive of the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) since 2019.

The body represents Wales’ 22 councils and "promotes the interests of local government and local democracy in Wales".

In May 2020 the WLGA warned that it would take councils "a generation" to pay for their pandemic response.

Ok... now we're just over half way through the UK Covid inquiry's three week stay in Wales.

We've heard from health experts and Welsh government ministers, like First Minister Mark Drakeford and pandemic Health Minisiter Vaughan Gething, are due on the stand next week.

The Covid inquiry is split into different parts. Work in four areas has begun:

• Resilience and preparedness
• Core UK decision-making and political governance
• The impact of Covid on healthcare systems
• Vaccines, therapeutics and antiviral treatment

Image source, Piranha Photography

Future strands will consider:

• The care sector
• Government procurement and PPE
• Test-and-trace
• UK government's businesses and financial responses
• Health inequalities
• Education, children and young people
• Other public services

The inquiry began on 28 June 2022. There is no specific timescale for how long the inquiry will last but the public hearings are not expected to run beyond summer 2026.

It has been in Scotland, now in Wales and will go to Northern Ireland next month.

Image source, UK Covid-19 Inquiry

That's all for a bit as the inquiry is on lunch - and so are we - and we'll be hearing from Wales' local government organisation this afternoon.

Here are the key things we've learned from Public Health Wales' pandemic advisor Dr Quentin Sandifer's testimony this morning:

• He says it was "astonishing" Welsh government felt Covid wasn't a civil emergency in early March 2020.
• In the early days of Covid the UK took 4,500 Covid tests from a batch of 5,000 that were meant for Wales
• He also reports that the early Covid period was "too frantic" to make records of meetings and discussions
• There was "frustration and concern" at Public Health Wales in mid-February over the speed at which health boards were setting up their testing capacity
• Wales is still not prepared for a future pandemic, with Sandifer reporting there's still "work to be done" despite being in a better position than in 2020

The UK government put the Welsh government in an "impossible position" when Wales chose to introduce a firebreak lockdown in October 2020, Taj tells the inquiry.

She says the Wales TUC viewed the firebreak as the "right call" but Westminster's unwillingness to provide financial support for workers was unfair.

"The UK government didn’t seem to care that it was putting the Welsh government in an impossible position," she says.

The discussion was quickly shut down by inquiry chairwoman Baroness Hallett who pointed out that looking into the "devolution settlement" was beyond her scope.

That's all from Sandifer, up next is Shavanah Taj, she has been general secretary of the Wales Trade Union Congress (TUC) since 2013.

The TUC is the coordinating body of trade unions in Wales, with 48 member unions representing about 400,000 workers.

Image source, PA Media

In the early stages of the pandemic, Taj described "horror stories" over the lack of PPE available to NHS staff.

She expressed "shock and concern" in December 2021 at the Welsh government's decision to fine companies and workers if employees were not working from home when able to do so.

The following July she warned that workers were being "put at risk" as bosses did not have the capacity to make workplaces safe.

The inquiry is shown a briefing that PHW prepared on 11 March making the case for the Welsh government to declare a major incident.

It outlined predictions that Wales would see 1.5 million symptomatic cases, 200,000 requiring hospital admission, an estimated 18,000 needing mechanical ventilation and 25,000 predicted deaths.

The briefing also said that a "recurring theme of lessons learned" from past situations was that "major incidents are not declared soon enough".

Sandifer tells the hearing: "I just felt we needed to lay our cards on the table and say to Welsh government ‘this is how we see it, are you going to use emergency legislation'?"

He confirms that the response relayed to him from Welsh government was that such a declaration "would not be helpful".

The first death from Covid in Wales was recorded on 15 March.

There is "still more work to be done" to ensure Wales is ready for a future pandemic, says Sandifer.

However, he says Public Health Wales is in a "much stronger place now", having the more staff and resources to deal with a pandemic than it had in early 2020.

Cemlyn Davies
BBC Wales Political Correspondent

Image source, Getty Images

There was "frustration and concern" at Public Health Wales in mid-February over the speed at which health boards were setting up their testing capacity, says Sandifer.

He says discussions began on 27 January to try and get health boards to take on the responsibility of Covid testing.

Following this frustration, Sandifer says the chief medical officer for Wales wrote to health boards on 10 February asking them to have coronavirus testing units operational by "no later than 14 February".

"It might have been helpful" if that direction had been given sooner, he adds.

Owain Clarke
BBC Wales Health Correspondent

In late February, Sandifer says he raised serious concerns that "national politics" would "trump public safety in Wales" with regard to Covid tests.

He suggests there was a verbal agreement with the pharmaceutical company Roche to supply Wales with 5,000 tests - yet most of these were later used for the UK-wide response.

"My concern was that we were going to lose those tests, which we subsequently did... we [ultimately] had about 500."

On 3 March 2020, an email from Andrew Jones at PHW was forwarded to Sandifer in which he explains that the Welsh government position was that the Covid outbreak "is not a civil emergency situation" and was being kept under review.

Asked for his thoughts, Sandifer says he was "astonished".

He adds: "We're at the beginning of March and the Welsh government resilience team were telling us they didn't think we were approaching - if we weren't already there - a civil emergency."

When asked why he thinks the was the case, he says: "That question needs to be directed to Welsh government."

Image source, Getty Images

Sandifer describes the last days of January 2020 as a “seminal moment” in his understanding of the future threat of Covid.

On the 30th, the World Health Organization declared the virus a public health emergency of international concern and the following day the first two confirmed UK cases were announced.

However, Sandifer tells the inquiry the Welsh government still considered the situation to be a "health-led incident" which wouldn’t require a wider government response.

“I was starting to get very concerned," he says.

The inquiry has adjourned for a 10-minute break.

We'll bring you the latest from Sandifer when he resumes giving his evidence.