Last week, the First Minister announced that Wales was moving into the lowest level of covid restrictions; Alert Level Zero.
This move means most of the remaining restrictions in Wales have been lifted. There are now no limits on how many people can meet indoors, outdoors, in homes, public places, venues or events. There is no longer a blanket requirement to follow social distancing, but businesses, workplaces and other venues will still have to put in place measures to keep people safe.
Face coverings will continue to be legally required in most indoor public spaces, including on public transport, in shops and in healthcare settings. And self-isolating for 10 days will remain if you test positive for Covid.
We said at the last review in July that we would do this if the public health situation allowed.
The breakthrough with the vaccine, and the brilliant deployment by the NHS in Wales, means we can pull back on regulations as a way of manging the risk. In no uncertain terms, our vaccination programme is saving lives. If you haven’t taken up the offer of a jab yet, please do get one.
Things are moving in the right direction after a very trying eighteen months, but we are by no means dropping our guard. The risk of new variants will be on our radar for the foreseeable future, and we will have to learn with that.
We’re now in level zero, and hopefully we can stay there. But we’ll keep up our three-week review cycle and watching the data carefully. I want to pay tribute to all of you, not least those frontline workers, for getting through this most difficult of times. Ymlaen Llanelli
