5. Will the First Minister provide an update on the local coronavirus restrictions as they currently apply to Caerphilly County Borough? OQ55660

Can I thank Hefin David for that, Llywydd? It is encouraging that the incidence of coronavirus has continued its gradual fall in Caerphilly borough over the last seven days. This is a reflection of the committed efforts of people who live in the area. Provided that fall continues, we will work with local authorities and others to plan for the gradual lifting of those restrictions.

Over the last few weeks here in Caerphilly, we've done our very best to get the community spread of COVID-19 under control, and, as the First Minister recognises, we've achieved that, and I welcome the fact that he recognises that. I also offer him the opportunity, again, to offer congratulations to the people of Caerphilly on achieving that.

Could he provide us with an outline of how the decision process is going to be made this week and every week? How does the decision-making process happen? Is it a meeting with the county borough council? Is the health Minister involved? If he can explain how that takes place this week, and, subsequently then, when will the public announcement be made, in what form and how? And perhaps with this last question I'm pushing my luck, but would he be able to give us an indication of where we may be this week?

Llywydd, can I thank Hefin David for those very proper questions? And, you know, I just want to say again that he is right that the technical advisory cell summary, to which Adam Price referred earlier this afternoon, says in it that there is an improving picture in Caerphilly, attributed to the introduction of local restrictions and the swift multi-agency response. And the mobility data for Wales—hard data—demonstrates that there are reductions in mobility in Wales, particularly around Caerphilly, compared to earlier weeks, which shows that people are, as Hefin David says, very actively playing their part in trying to bring the rise in coronavirus numbers in that borough under control.

The decision-making process goes like this, Llywydd: in the first part of the week, our public health experts and our scientific advisers will be scrutinising the data, the data on a seven-day rolling incidence number, the positivity rate in tests carried out in Caerphilly and surveillance data from the other more general data sources we have, through the King's College app, through the wastewater surveillance arrangements we have. That will then be reported on Thursday of this week to a meeting that will involve the Welsh Government—I will be there, the health Minister will attend; the leader of the local authority; local public health authorities; the local health board and Gwent Police. That meeting will discuss whether or not we have a reliable enough reduction in the figures and incidence in the Caephilly area to begin the process of lifting local lockdown restrictions. And, in the end, it's Ministers who have to decide, so the third and final part of that process, having been advised by all those local players, is that Ministers will make a decision and then we will communicate that decision as quickly as we are able, particularly to local Members, but, obviously, to the public at large.

My ambition is to be able to begin the process of lifting those restrictions as soon as it is safe to do so. I want to be clear that I don't believe that there will be an ability to lift all restrictions in one go; we will start with some measures and build them up over a period of weeks. Whether we will be in that position on Thursday of this week, I'm afraid I really couldn't speculate at this point, because I have to allow the process, as I've described, of expert advice, local knowledge and final determination to take its path on Thursday of this week. And then, we will do that every Thursday while there are any areas in Wales subject to those local restrictions.

First Minister, thank you for that answer to the question. You talked about data and the use of data, and, obviously, Caerphilly was the first county to go into a localised lockdown on a county-wide basis. I've been promoting, over the last couple of weeks, the use of as much localised data to have hyperlocal lockdowns as possible; the Welsh Government used some of that data to only lock down Llanelli instead of the whole of Carmarthenshire. How do you see, going forward, the use of that localised data helping inform your decision making so that greater use can be made of hyperlocalised lockdowns where the data supports that, instead of county or region-wide lockdowns?

Well, Llywydd, I think that is a very sensible approach, and it's the one that we will adopt as a Welsh Government. If it is possible to concentrate restrictions in the areas where the problem is greatest, that is exactly what we would aim to do. Sometimes the geography of an area makes that more difficult. Sometimes there is simply spread at a community level across a local authority area that precludes us from being able to use those hyperlocal methods. But, as Andrew R.T. Davies has said, we were able to do so in Llanelli, and when I answered Hefin David and said that I hoped we would be able to take the first steps out of local restrictions when it is safe to do so, then one of the ways that that might be possible would be to see whether, within a county borough area, the problem has become concentrated in one part of a council locality and to redraw the restriction boundaries within an area. If that is borne out by the data and can be delivered on the ground, then I think that we have absolutely not closed our minds to pursuing the lifting of some restrictions in that way.