The First Minister has shed some light on the Welsh Government’s strategy for exiting the current emergency, dismissing a “herd immunity” plan to control the spread of Covid-19 without a vaccine or effective treatment being in place.

This comes after a Gwynedd GP called on the Welsh Government to outline its official strategy, having previously become concerned over the lack of clarity on the issue.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Dwyfor Cluster GP leader Dr Eilir Hughes pointed out the three options for the crisis, namely:

Option A – Keeping rates low until an effective vaccine or treatment is available to achieve herd immunity

Option B – Eliminating the virus via aggressive test trace and isolation and long term restrictions

Option C – Achieving herd immunity by controlled spread of virus by community transmission

Herd immunity is when enough people cannot be affected by a virus, thus stopping it in its tracks.

It has been estimated that around 64 per cent of the population would have to catch Covid-19 for such immunity to develop, which risks further significant levels of deaths in the UK.

To mitigate this, measures would have to be put in place to protect those most at risk while the immunity developed in those at a lower risk of dying.

But despite this, it is still not clear if catching the virus once is sufficient to become immune to it in future.

Outlining the realities of all three strategies, Dr Hughes said: “With option A there’s no guarantee that a vaccine will work and may take a very long time to develop.

“Choosing this option on its own is a gamble.

“In the meantime, the virus remains in circulation which means continued restrictions which can lead to other harms including mental health and delays in treating other medical conditions such as cancer, as well as the economic sacrifices.

“Option B, meanwhile, requires stepping up the testing programme to stratospheric levels.

“It involves testing all staff, residents and patients at least weekly, if not more often, as well as other groups too, necessitating border controls and clamping down on any localised outbreaks fast.

“I cannot emphasise how difficult it would be to achieve eradication.

“The question remains if we have the labs, workforce and logistics in Wales to achieve this ambition.

“Option C would see society’s most vulnerable groups face the greatest restrictions, including ongoing shielding, possibly throughout winter in the case of a second peak.

“It begs the question of how confident can we be of what’s the herd immunity rate at present?

“It’s suggested to be somewhere around 6 per cent at the moment, but must be upwards of at least 60 per cent to achieve herd immunity.”

Pointing to the Scottish Government’s “ambitious” strategy of elimination, including “aggressive” test trace and isolation as well as long term restrictions on movement and activities, Dr Hughes added that Boris Johnson’s plans for England seemingly consisted of controlled community transmission, which is essentially to achieve herd immunity by controlling the spread of virus.

With no strict measures at the border, the strategy taken in England would have a huge effect on what happens in Wales, however.

When asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service during Friday’s daily briefing on his Government’s strategy, First Minister Mark Drakeford said that it consisted of “aspects” from options A and B, while ruling out achieving herd immunity without a treatment or vaccine.

He said: “It’s not the third and it’s a combination of some parts of the first and second.

“We are very determined to keep infection rates low and all of the actions we’ve taken together will help us to do that.

“Eliminating the virus where we can is a very important ambition too, but that is more difficult as we’re not in charge of our own destiny there as our border is porous and whatever happens across our border will matter as well.

“But there are some parts of Wales where we are not that far away from having almost no virus in circulation at all, and where we can sustain that and increase that then we would like to do that as well.

“But everything we are doing is designed to keep the rates of the circulation in Wales falling, to keep us on that steady downward path.

“If we find actions have been taken that are compromising that, then one of the tests we set out at the very beginning of this was that anything we do can be reversed.