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There is no guarantee that Wales will make it into the Christmas season without facing another fire lockdown, the Prime Minister said.
He cautioned that people should continue to follow the rules, rather than “behave in ways that increase those numbers again.”
And he said the only way Wales could avoid another fire lockdown was for people not to act as if the coronavirus was gone.
“So my message to the people of Wales today is that the firewall succeeded because of everything we did together,” he said.
“We can continue to be successful, but we only do so by not acting like the coronavirus is gone, not going back to the ways that spiked the numbers in early fall.
“And as long as we do those simple things together, there is a way to Christmas.
“But it’s not guaranteed because it really depends absolutely and fundamentally on each of us doing our part.”
Has the first firewall crash reduced the cases enough?
The Prime Minister also spoke about the ongoing discussions on plans for Christmas, for which the leaders of the delegate nations are attempting a common approach with the UK Government. See more details on that here.
Wales Medical Director Dr Frank Atherton released an analysis of the firewall crash Thursday night, according to Drakeford.
“He says that the evidence now is good enough to say that the fire stop period did succeed,” Drakeford told BBC Radio Wales on Friday.
“We’ve had 10 days in a row where the numbers in Wales have been going down – positivity rates are down, the number of people suffering from coronavirus is down.”
In Merthyr Tydfil, which had one of the highest infection rates in Wales before closure, cases per 100,000 people have dropped from around 760 to less than 260.
He added that UK scientific advisory body SAGE believes figures from a week ago show that the R number in Wales may have dropped below one.
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“What we have to do now is take advantage of that and make sure we don’t waste all of that by going back to behaving in ways that drive those numbers up again,” Drakeford said.
“Our plan has always been to find a way to Christmas without re-imposing restrictions of the severity that we saw during the fire.”
However, he said that if people don’t follow the “simple” measures – reducing the number of people they meet, traveling only when essential and working from home whenever possible – Wales could see an increase in numbers. once again.
For the latest updates from the Prime Minister, please follow WalesOnline’s coronavirus live blog here.
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