Wales comes out of ‘firebreak lockdown’ after 17 days of ‘hard work and sacrifices’

Wales’s 17-day firebreak 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
• Shops, gyms, hairdressers and places of worship can reopen
• Supermarkets can sell non-essential items
• People can meet inside homes with members of one other household if they are part of a “bubble”
• 10pm curfew on alcohol sales will continue
• No restrictions on travel within Wales, but people will only be allowed to leave the country for reasons such as work
• Two-metre social distancing and wearing face masks in enclosed public places, including on public transport and taxis
• People should work from home whenever possible
• Up to 15 people can take part in an organised indoor activity and up to 30 in an organised activity outdoors, providing all social distancing, hand hygiene and other COVID-19 safety measures are followed
• All schools and year groups will resume

First Minister Mark Drakeford said: “We all need to think about our own lives and what we can all do to keep our families safe. We need to stop thinking about the maximum limit of rules and regulations.
“Coronavirus is a highly infectious virus – it thrives on contact between people. To keep each other safe we need to 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 from today, which will follow up all the hard work and sacrifices which have been made during the firebreak.
“We cannot go back to the way we were living our lives and throw away all that hard work.”
The government has said 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, there had been a further 20,572 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK, bringing the total number of cases in the UK to 1,192,013.