There has been a serious data breach of the Covid database managed by Public Health Wales.
“Public Health Wales regrets to announce that there has been a data breach involving the personally identifiable data of Welsh residents who have tested positive for COVID-19,” said PHW in a statement admitting that the personal information of almost 20,000 people who had been tested positive for Covid-19 had been stolen in a data breach in August. The cause was “human error”.
Remember in September (oddly after the breach had occurred, but presumably before it had been discovered), Keir Starmer tweeted that Wales was “showing the difference we make when we’re in power.”
We now have our answer. More of a “shambles” than in England, where Mr Starmer said “The return of this virus and the return of restrictions are not an act of God. They’re a failure of Government.”
You can just imagine the political points Labour would have tried to score off a data-breach in England. It would have been several times louder than the fuss they made over the spreadsheet mishap which Labour claimed was “putting Lives at risk”. That was before Wales fell into precisely the same trap!
So, Labour couldn’t even manage Wales – which is a 20th the size of England – competently, but have the arrogance to complain about every action the government is taking. Personally, I don’t blame them for anything that has gone wrong in Wales. As I have previously written, the virus lays waste to our best laid schemes, and in any large scale human endeavour, ‘shit happens’. But after his boast about Wales being a showcase for Labour’s competence, perhaps some humility might be in order from Starmer.
Despite the supposed “shambles” of the UK’s response to the coronavirus, we were the first country to roll out a vaccine programme, and one of the first to develop a vaccine. That is something to be proud of, and a cause for cautious optimism. Yes, as in England, and as in Wales, and all around Europe, and much of the rest of the world, the response to this unprecedented-in-our-lifetimes pandemic has been arguably “shambolic” as we scrambled to understand the science, master the logistics, manage the economic damage, and sustain our societies. I don’t think it could be any other way.
So here’s too our collective ‘shambles’. We’re pushing through. We’re getting there.
Happy New Year.
