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Wales’ new Health Minister has announced plans for a £100m funding package to support the health and care system as it recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.

Eluned Morgan, who took over from Vaughan Gething as Health Minister last week, made the announcement on Thursday, with non-emergency services set to resume.

Of the funding, £17m will be given to the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board to fund projects to increase capacity in planned care, diagnostics, therapies and mental health provision.

Meanwhile, £2.5m will go to Velindre Cancer Centre to increase capacity for radiotherapy.

Ms Morgan said: “Helping our health and social care services recover from the pandemic is going to take time, investment and a new approach to delivering care.

“The remarkable commitment of our NHS and social care workers has helped us through this pandemic to a point where we can now start to think about the future.

“I am determined that we now provide them the support they need to help the service recover.”

Ms Morgan said she was “under no illusions about the size of the task ahead” but described it as a “real opportunity to transform the delivery of health and care services”.

She added: “The pandemic saw the early and swift adoption of new technology and ways of working, I want to see health boards build on this good work.

“The Welsh Government is committing an extra £1bn to support our recovery plan. Today I am detailing how an initial £100m will be allocated to our NHS to start this work.”

The funding was welcomed by Caerphilly’s Senedd Member Hefin David.

He said: “I have spoken with many constituents over the past 14 months, who have been directly affected by the restrictions around healthcare.

“For the most part, the people I spoke with agreed that the restrictions were necessary. However, things are looking much brighter now and it is the right time to start picking back up routine appointments and moving forward in other areas of health protection too.”

He added: “This investment in our local health board will help support those people within my constituency who have been waiting on appointments, so this is very welcome news.

“I’m also glad to see it going towards mental health services locally. This last year has been such a huge challenge – there will be a lot of people who need help in recovering from that.”

Darren Hughes, director of the Welsh NHS Confederation, said: “Leaders across the Welsh NHS are fully aware that there are a high volume of patients waiting to start treatment, but staff across the board are doing all they can to provide the best care to patients.

“We welcome the additional £100 million investment announced by the Welsh Government to help with the health and care system’s recovery from the Covid pandemic. This will help the NHS in Wales to tackle waiting lists and increase capacity as we focus on resuming planned care once more.

“There’s no doubt that there’s a long way to go. It will take the NHS time to recover and we must not underestimate the scale of the challenge ahead and the support that staff working in health and care will require.”

Welsh Conservative Senedd Member Gareth Davies said the pandemic has “exposed Labour’s historic mismanagement of our NHS”.

He added: “We entered the crisis with record waiting lists and cancer targets not met since 2008, and as we come out of the pandemic, a staggering one in five people in Wales are now stuck on a waiting list.

“This is causing unnecessary pain and discomfort for hundreds of thousands of people across the country and putting lives at risk, and whilst we welcome any investment to tackle the huge backlog, this injection of cash will only scratch the surface.”

Plaid Cymru’s health spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, said: “Waiting times were already too high before the pandemic, so this can’t be about returning things to the ‘pre-pandemic normal’. To turn things around, the Labour Welsh Government must introduce a concrete, ambitious recovery plan, that puts NHS Wales in a better position than we were at the start of the pandemic.

“As a matter of urgency, this must prioritise early cancer diagnosis, bringing the undiagnosed into the system and providing effective care for those patients in later stages of cancer who will need more complex treatments.”