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Wales’ 17-day fire lockdown has ended and new national measures to combat COVID-19 have come into effect.
The new national restrictions include:
- Groups of up to four people from different households can meet in cafes, pubs, and restaurants.
- Stores, gyms, hair salons and places of worship may reopen
- Supermarkets can sell non-essential items
- People can meet inside households with members of another household if they are part of a “bubble.”
- The curfew will continue at 10 pm on the sale of alcohol
- There are no restrictions on traveling within Wales, but people will only be able to leave the country for reasons such as work.
- Social distance of two meters and use of face masks in closed public places, even in public transport and taxis
- People should work from home whenever possible
- Up to 15 people can participate in an organized indoor activity and up to 30 in an organized outdoor activity, provided all social distancing, hand hygiene, and other COVID-19 safety measures are followed.
- All schools and annual groups will resume
There was anger in October after supermarkets plugged items that were deemed non-essential
Prime Minister Mark Drakeford said: “We must all think about our own lives and what we can do to keep our families safe. We must stop thinking about the ceiling of rules and regulations.
“Coronavirus is a highly infectious virus; it thrives on person-to-person contact. To stay safe, we must reduce the number of people we have contact with and the amount of time we spend with them.
“There will be a new set of national measures starting today that will follow up on all the hard work and sacrifices that have been made during the firewall.
“We can’t go back to the way we lived our lives and throw away all that hard work.”
The government has said that 156 more people have died within 28 days of testing positive for COVID-19, bringing the UK total to 49,044.
As of 9am on Sunday, another 20,572 laboratory-confirmed coronavirus cases had been recorded in the UK, bringing the total number of cases in the UK to 1,192,013.
