2. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 13 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:14, 13 May 2020

Well, Llywydd, 'local' means the common and everyday understanding of what 'local' is. Our advice to people in Wales is stay home: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives. That's been our message for the last six weeks and it's our message now. So, if you are leaving your home for exercise or for other purposes, stay local, because by staying local you stay safe. It's not an invitation to jump in your car and drive somewhere else to do things that you could do just as easily on foot and from home. 

So, some things are not done as easily in that way, and you may have to be in your car if you have to be, but it's only when you have to be, not because it's something that you would find convenient or entertaining to do. The more you travel, the more we go around, the more the virus will spread. And all the efforts we have made have been designed to stop that from happening, and we've succeeded in doing that. So, what we don't want to do is to put that at risk by encouraging people to do things that add to the risk levels.

We made a very carefully calibrated decision to do three things that we thought we could make available to people in Wales while still staying below the level at which the R value will rise and the virus will start to circulate again. That's the lens that people should be using to think about any of these decisions. The more we do outside the home, and particularly when we don't do it locally, the more risks we will be causing to one another, and the Welsh Government's advice and the scientific advice that we are drawing on is all clear about that. It needn't confuse anybody. And it's not helpful, I think, to try forever to be finding ways in which you can pull sentences in one direction or another in order to cause a bit of a confusion. The position in Wales is simple: stay at home, stay local and stay safe.