The results of the review of the regulations we are considering today are that indoor hospitality is able to reopen for groups of six people from up to six households, holiday accommodation can reopen fully, indoor entertainment and visitor attractions can reopen, and up to 30 people can take part in organised activities indoors and up to 50 people in organised outdoor activities, including wedding receptions. International travel has also resumed. We will follow the same red, amber, green traffic lights system in use in England and Scotland, but with some extra safeguards to do all we can to prevent coronavirus from being re-imported into Wales from overseas. And, Llywydd, because something is allowed, it certainly doesn't mean it's compulsory and it doesn't even necessarily mean that it is advisable. I repeat the view of the Welsh Government that this is the year to holiday at home and to enjoy everything that Wales has to offer. 

As part of the three-week review, as of Monday of next week, we will also lift restrictions on the overall number of visitors able to visit people living in care homes. That will complete the decisions from this three-week review, and the next three-week review cycle will culminate at the start of June. Then, if the public health position remains positive, we will consider whether we can move to alert level 1. That would mean relaxing the rules further around people meeting in their own homes, increasing the number of people able to attend wedding receptions, and restarting larger events, building on the experience of our pilot programme, which is now under way.

Llywydd, while all of this is undoubtedly positive, I have to sound a note of caution. Once again, the pandemic has taken an unexpected and worrying turn. At the end of last week, there were more than 1,600 cases of the so-called India variant in the United Kingdom, and that number in England is doubling every five to seven days. The majority of those cases are to be found in north-west England, London and in the Bedford area. Here in Wales, we have some 25 cases linked to the India variant of concern. All of those are being investigated and all contacts of those individuals are, of course, being traced and tested.

The emerging evidence suggests that this new variant may be more transmissible than the current dominant form of the virus—the Kent variant—which was responsible for the surge in cases in Wales at the start of the winter last year. As of today, there is still not yet enough evidence about the impact of the India variant on the vaccination efficiency or whether it causes more serious illnesses. We all hope, of course, that the vaccine will be protective against this new variant and others that may arise, and the science continues to investigate the position, and we will receive advice from our scientific advisers as that evidence becomes clearer. 

In the meantime, it is really important that we continue to do everything we can to keep levels of the virus as low as possible in Wales as we continue to relax restrictions in a careful and cautious way. It is all those individual efforts that add up to the best and most effective way of responding to the emergence of new variants. Of course, we will continue to be guided by the latest scientific advice, as we have throughout the pandemic, and to put that advice into the public domain for Members to see. I ask Members to approve the changes set out in this review of the coronavirus restrictions regulations when they are brought forward for debate.