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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 11:18 am on 10 June 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 11:18, 10 June 2020

Well, Llywydd, I share that hope that people in Wales have that we will be in a position at the end of next week to further lift some of the restrictions we've all had to abide by over what is now nearly three months. How will we know whether it is possible to do so? Well, it will depend upon the level of circulation of the virus here in Wales, and there are a range of indications that we will be able to use to tell us whether or not we have headroom to be able to offer further amelioration of those restrictions. The R number will be one indication, but some of the things that I covered in my statement, Llywydd, will also be relevant.

So, to give you a different sort of yardstick, in answer to the leader the of the opposition's question, when we went into lockdown at the end of March, there were 400 new confirmed cases of coronavirus in Wales on any one day and that number was rising. Seven weeks ago, when we first began to lift some restrictions, that number had fallen to around a 100 a day, and was falling, and that helped to create the headroom to begin the process. As we go into this week, the figure is around 50 new confirmed cases every day, and that number continues to fall. So, your chances of meeting somebody, as you leave your own home, who is suffering from coronavirus is about an eighth of what it was when we went into lockdown. And that's just a way of trying to explain to people why it is possible to offer people additional freedoms.

But, the second thing that we will continue to have to emphasise to people is that, as they exercise those freedoms, they have to exercise them really carefully, because even if there are only 50 new confirmed cases a day, you have no way of knowing, as you leave your home, whether you are going to be in contact one of those 50 people. So, social distancing, hand hygiene, use of face coverings, and non-medical face coverings on public transport, all those are things that we must still use, even as we lift the lockdown, to go on making sure that we bear down of the virus, we create more headroom, so, at the end of another three week period, there are further things that we would be able to do to help resume life as we were more used to it before the virus began.