Shielding in Wales to end on 31st March

Advice that clinically extremely vulnerable people should stay at home is to be paused on 31 March, Wales’ health minister has said.

A written statement from Vaughan Gething says: “Case prevalence is now significantly below what it was in December and on a trend downwards across Wales.”Conscious of the associated harms when asking people to follow shielding measures, we must only keep this advice in place for as long as is absolutely necessary.

“In light of the change of context, the Chief Medical Officer has recommended that the advice to the clinically extremely vulnerable to follow shielding measures should be paused after the 31st March.

“It is important to note that just as we are planning relaxations and the first dose of the vaccine has been offered to all of this group, experience has shown that we do need to be prepared to potentially step advice up again if required.

“The shielding patient list will remain in place and available should we need to ask anyone to follow shielding measures again in future. It is my sincere hope that this will not be necessary.”