Welsh Government testing moves: U-turns or based on fast-changing advice?

Like it or not the cliche 'u-turn' isn't going anywhere. When politicians take a stand against a particular policy then change their mind, it's worth pointing out whatever the motive behind the change.

Some of the Welsh Government's recent decisions have without a doubt been u-turns but it's up to you whether you think they're motivated by hypocrisy and failure to understand or changing scientific advice.

On Saturday, the health minister announced that from now on, all people living or working in care homes will be tested for Covid-19. Previously, only residents and staff in care homes with a confirmed or suspected case of the virus were tested.

It's a significant change from a position where the First Minister insisted "the clinical evidence tells us that there is no value" in testing all residents and staff without symptoms, because a person could test negative one day and positive the other.

The Welsh Government had been heavily criticised by opposition parties for not following the move by the NHS in England to test all residents and staff in all care homes.

Today, the First Minister denied Wales was catching up with a policy introduced in England at the end of April.

He said both governments had changed policies based on new scientific advice which came at the end of the week.

In England, he said, the change came from offering tests in all homes to guaranteeing them last Friday. In Wales that decision was announced on Saturday.

What had changed, said the First Minister, was the advice. The Chief Medical officer for Wales had updated his advice to say that with coronavirus declining in the community and in care homes, the time had come to focus on stopping it getting to the 8 out 10 care homes here in Wales which haven't reported a case.

Since the UK Government introduced an online booking-system for people who were eligible for coronavirus tests, there's been confusion and frustration for such people in Wales.

Until recently in the website's menu of options, if you selected Wales it said that tests were "unavailable." They weren't, but you had to go through the Welsh Government's own system which was still being developed.

Today, the First Minister confirmed Wales will after all be part of the UK-wide web portal.

What's changed, was that the Welsh Government was now assured that the information from it would now come to Wales, the First Minister said.

When it was introduced by the UK Government, he said, there was no method of the details of those booking and their test results being fed back into the Welsh NHS. That's now been fixed, he added.

It means that an online referral system which Amazon was developing for the Welsh Government has been scrapped.

The First Minister promised to provide a figure for how much that project had cost but denied that it was money wasted saying that, because it had appeared that Wales would need its own system, the Welsh Government had had to take steps to provide one.

This is a change of mind which was welcomed by the Welsh Conservatives who called it "great news for key workers in Wales" but said it was "a massive shame on the Welsh Government for the time and money wasted when they should have joined up with the UK Government on this right away. For weeks testing in Wales has stagnated and the people that we owe our lives to are being let down."