Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price has today unveiled his party’s 10-point Coronavirus winter plan which is designed to avoid both a second wave and a second lockdown.

The Plaid Cymru Leader said the evidence was now clear that Wales was “poised perilously on the brink of a second wave of COVID-19” and that a failure to act could lead to a second wave “worse than the first”.

Mr Price said that Wales could use the ‘smart lockdown’ cluster-based approach adopted by countries like Pakistan based around micro-quarantines focused on high-infection areas within communities not a wide area untargeted lockdown, for example, across a whole local authority area.

Caerphilly County Borough became the first area of Wales to have a local lockdown imposed on it, and with warnings issued to neighbouring councils, a “cooldown” strategy could help avoid larger scale lockdowns across Wales.

The 10-point plan has a strong focus on community based solutions, utilisation of new technologies and improvement of communication, and is based on the following ten points:

1. Smart Lockdowns: Micro-quarantines at community level

2. Improve Cluster Identification: Encourage everyone to keep contact records, with the support of an app

3. Asymptomatic Testing: Test symptomless contacts (as well as those with symptoms)

4. New Tests: Use the latest technologies such as quick saliva tests

5. Communication: Start a regular conversation with the public around avoidance of the 3 Cs: closed, crowded and close-contact settings.

6. Safer Air: Wider use of face mask and better use of ventilation. Make masks mandatory in closed public settings

7. Protect Schools & Colleges: Bring in national guidelines for use of face masks

8. Fewer Deaths, Better Treatments: Early intervention and the use of pulse oximeters

9. Local Furlough: Targeted local lockdowns must be supported by local economic package of support

10. New COVID Plan: Wales needs a public plan for the period from now until a vaccine becomes widely available.

Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS said, “The evidence is now clear that we are poised perilously on the brink of a second wave of COVID-19. Infections are rising, and this may soon be reflected in hospitalisations and deaths.

“Returning holidaymakers, the easing of restrictions combined with less adherence with those still in place have combined in new disease spikes. Autumn now brings us the reopening of schools, the return of universities and colleges, a gradual return to work, colder weather closing off outdoor mixing as an option and the onset of the flu season.

“If we do not act, then winter could become a second wave that is even worse than the first with little option than reintroducing a full Lockdown. It is not too late however to avoid this from happening. We could instead adopt a “Cooldown” strategy that avoids both a second wave and a second lockdown.

“The Welsh Government must utilise all the tools available to beating this virus, including emerging technologies and treatments, and must be transparent in its approach.”

Plaid’s Ten Point Plan in detail

From Lockdown to Cooldown: How we prevent a deadly second wave this winter

1. From Local Lockdowns to Smart Lockdowns. Using the ‘smart lockdown’ cluster-based approach adopted by countries like Pakistan, based around micro-quarantines focused on high-infection areas within communities, not a wide area untargeted lockdown, for example, across a whole local authority area. This approach does depend on getting data back as quickly as possible.

2. Improve Cluster Identification. As a minimum we should ask every member of the public to maintain a record of contacts (not just those in extended households), sending out a paper records manual for everyone to keep. We should also adopt and promote a digital contact tracing app as an additional tool. We should adapt the ones being launched in Scotland or England, or Google/Apple’s alternative already in use in Europe – to build our own to make sure we change the design as we learn from the data.

3. Test Asymptomatic not Just Symptomatic Contacts. Everyone who has come into contact with a known COVID-19 carrier should be tested regardless of whether they have symptoms. This change would be in line with WHO advice on the importance of asymptomatic transmission and would follow a similar change in Scotland last month.

4. New tests and Testing Everyone. New testing methods such as quick saliva tests could mean we can test massively every day. This could focus on high-risk groups e.g. care home staff and residents, frontline healthcare workers, other essential workers in key businesses, schools and colleges, BME communities and residents in areas with local clusters of cases.

We need to constantly ensure that testing is accurate and is identifying those who need to be isolated through testing for infectiousness not infection. Currently PCR tests are very sensitive and designed to detect patients with even low viral load – i.e. patients who are not very infectious. We should instead be changing the testing parameters (or using different tests) to identify those who are actually infectious so we can concentrate our efforts on isolating and treating them.

5. Communication around the 3Cs. We need to recreate public understanding of the challenges ahead. Restarting the daily briefings would underline the seriousness of the challenges ahead. We know that the 3Cs are especially dangerous for virus transmission: Closed, crowded and close-contact settings. As we enter the winter months we should ask people to commit to avoiding the 3Cs as much as possible – effectively asking people to stay at home and stay apart as much as possible. We need new emphasis on household isolation as recent UK evidence suggests as many as 75% of those with COVID-19 symptoms are currently leaving home, ignoring the request to self-isolate. The mixed messages from Westminster have been extremely unhelpful throughout this period. An Emergency Summit of UK Prime and First Ministers would be one way of undoing some of that damage and rebuilding a coherent message.

6. Safer Air: Wider use of face mask and better use of ventilation. Making masks mandatory in closed public settings was an essential change in policy given that we now know the disease is carried as aerosols not only droplets. We should now extend this to wearing face coverings within households where an individual is self-isolating as this can be effective in limiting transmission within families. Wearing masks is one life of defence but we also need to look at technical solutions for better air exchange, a Welsh Ventilation Challenge focused on finding and funding rapid engineering solutions to how can we allow fresh air rather than this virus to circulate inside public buildings – schools, hospitals, offices and shops.

7. Protecting Schools and Colleges. Consistent with the wider science face masks in busy corridors and communal areas should be made mandatory in schools and there should be other national guidelines too e.g. to make sure that large groups of students don’t spend long times together, encouraging the use of other community buildings, marquees, gyms to reduce class size, on children wearing warm clothing indoors to allow the opening of windows, clear thresholds using well publicised local infection rates as advised by Independent Sage which could be catalysts for yet further measures like the use of face masks in the classroom. Whatever health protection measures are implemented we need a parallel strategy to close the gap for those that have lost out on learning since the start of the year. The Welsh Government should also publish an Action Plan to limit transmission on college campuses as students return. The ban on large gatherings needs to be supervised by universities with the 6-person indoor rule applying wherever possible and the use of face masks made mandatory as in schools in communal settings. The two-week initial quarantine should also apply to domestic students not just those arriving from abroad, and a programme of testing all staff and students every fourteen days.

8. Fewer Deaths, Better Treatments. We need a national strategy to drive down the case fatality ratio in any second wave. We need to continue to embrace early intervention and the use of pulse oximeters at home under the supervision of health professionals. A national strategy for sharing best practice on promising treatments like ‘proning’, Dexamethasone and Remdesivir should be developed as a matter of urgency.

9. Local Furlough and Local Authority support. Targeted local lockdowns must be supported by a local economic support package to protect those who temporarily lose income. This should go above and beyond the UK Government’s furlough scheme and include those sectors and individuals currently not covered by state intervention. We also need to increase the level of income support for those who are losing income because they have to self-isolate. Similarly, an agreed protocol between Welsh Government and the Welsh Local Government Association would lead to direct financial support to protect public services in areas affected by local lockdowns.

10. We need a New COVID Plan. Whether or not the Welsh Government agrees with any of the above proposals we need a plan for the period from now until a vaccine becomes available. Government needs to plan ahead even during an emergency when it has imperfect information. The Plan should set out how the Welsh Government envisages the use of vaccines next year, imperfect as they will also no doubt prove to be in the first instance. The Plan should be a holistic strategy which includes the minimisation of wider social and economic harms. The Technical Advisory Cell’s membership and remit should be widened to reflect this change.