There is an image painted during the Crimean War that portrays Florence Nightingale, the Lady of the Lamp, tending to badly wounded soldiers as they lay in dank and dark conditions. It is that portrait then that springs to mind on reading the latest report of Baroness Hallett into the Covid 19 pandemic: Specifically that the NHS service in Wales was on the brink of collapse and was held together only be remarkable courage of the incredible staff who kept it functioning.

Baroness Hallett said the healthcare system "teetered on the brink of total collapse" throughout the pandemic and "only just" coped with the pressure it was placed under.

She concluded a complete collapse of the entire system was only "narrowly avoided" because of the "extraordinary efforts of all those working in the healthcare systems".

So, thank you one and all. We owe you our deepest thanks. You all were the beacons of flickering light in the darkest hour. We cannot imagine what it was it like to work through shifts as those in your care succumbed to lonely deaths.

But Baroness Hallett has also highlighted that for all of the remarkable stories of staff dedication and courage, there were multiple examples of the administrative system simply buckling under the pressures of the pandemic.

Shielding letters sent out to clinically extremely vulnerable people at the start of the pandemic failed in Wales, the task was "significant and complex " and the time it took to produce the letters led to a delay of at least two weeks in the letters arriving. Two weeks in the pandemic was often a matter of life and death.

While there had been a huge effort to try to improve the data systems required to identify at-risk people rapidly, those improvements were still not in place when the head of NHS Wales gave testimony in September 2024. Wales remains behind the curve on digital transformation.

No one could have predicted the size and scale of the pandemic. Better now that we heed Baroness Hallett’s words. That is only part of the challenge facing our new Welsh Government come May.