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Closing all pubs in Newport is an option the Welsh government is considering amid a surge in new coronavirus cases.
Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething said he is looking at a variety of options, the simplest and most meaningful one being to close all pubs in the city.
Public Health Wales, in conjunction with the Newport City Council and the Aneurin Bevan University Board of Health, has launched an investigation following a sharp increase in coronavirus cases in Newport.
PHW also published a list of seven pubs and bars in the city that have been visited by people subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19 who may have been infectious when they visited.
As of Sunday afternoon, Newport had the fourth highest total population-adjusted seven-day cases in Wales, at 43.3 per 100,000 people. That’s behind Caerphilly (85), Merthyr Tydfil (56.4) and Rhondda Cynon Taf (48.5).
Speaking to BBC Radio Wales on Monday, Gething explained how Newport’s increase in cases was different from that of its neighboring local authority Caerphilly, which was subjected to a local lockdown last week.
Gething said: “We didn’t see pubs as a significant vector of the way the virus spread in Caerphilly, the intelligence we had was much more about contact in homes.”
On Newport, he said: “What appears to be a big social gathering in private homes has led to people going to different pubs that Public Health Wales has identified.”
“We may need to take a different option in Newport. I have a variety of options to consider from the closing of all the pubs, which is the most important and simple.
“There is also the possibility of reducing the hours of the pubs, or of doing what Ireland has done, where you can only enter a pub if you also order a meal, which means that you cannot go to a pub for a drink. in six or seven different places.
“We are looking at a variety of those options, we have to determine which is the right choice considering the landscape in each area.
“Local locks might look slightly different because we may have slightly different issues to address.
“Of course in pubs we have to take action, but we have to understand that if we shut down an entire sector, we will cause harm by doing so, including people who have been following the rules.
“As minister of health, I never forget that major unemployment events create greater challenges and also greater demand on the health service.”
He added: “Pubs are a regulated environment where people drink together in public. We may have different challenges if we shift that drinking activity to people’s homes where we know there is a much higher risk of spreading the coronavirus.
“If we need to make a decision [on pubs] today [Monday]Then we will do it and it will be me or the Prime Minister who will make it clear to the public. “
While Caerphilly became the first local authority in Wales to enter a local lockdown, the municipalities of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf urged their residents to take voluntary action, such as using public transport only for essential reasons, working from home if possible and avoid visiting nursing homes, in a bet to avoid an official lockdown.
The health minister added that he expects to see “more people coming to our hospitals” in the next three weeks.
“For all three of those tips [Newport, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr] I’ll get more information later today. [Monday] about the test results, “said Mr. Gething.
“Not only in the number of cases, but also in the number of people who test positive, the rate of positivity, basically, how many people out of 100 test positive.
“Now all of those things will tell us something about how far this has spread and then the information that we get from the ‘prove, trace, protect’ system on whether we have clusters of cases that we can’t link to one case or location – that’s where it becomes much more worrisome, inexplicable community transmission. “
The Newport bars and pubs named by Public Health Wales are:
- Breeze on Cambrian Rd on September 4-5
- The Potters on Upper Dock St on September 5
- Break ‘n’ Dish in Stow Hill between September 1-8
- Tiny Rebel Rogerstone at Wern Industrial Estate on September 6, 7 and 8
- Ye Olde Bull Inn on High St, Caerleon on September 4
- The Handpost at the Risca Road / Bassaleg Road junction on September 8
- Three horseshoes on Pillmawr Rd on September 6
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