Rules may have to be tighter for unified UK Christmas – minister
WALES could adopt tighter nationwide restrictions mirroring those included in England and Scotland’s tier systems in order to have a common approach ahead of the Christmas period, Health Minister Vaughan Gething has said.
Mr Gething said the measures, which would result in “changes” for people in Wales for a “limited period of time”, would be considered as England comes to the end of its four-week lockdown.
But Mr Gething said ministers were considering “a more common approach to measures” with the rest of the UK amid a rise in new virus cases in parts of Wales and in order to facilitate travel plans between other UK nations.
It is thought a common UK-wide approach to coronavirus restrictions over Christmas would likely see slightly larger numbers of households permitted to gather for a short period of time around December 25. Neither details nor a timeframe are yet to be agreed.
On Monday he told the Welsh Government’s press briefing: “We need to get to the festive season, but that may mean we’ll look to potentially think about the measures that Scotland have introduced as well as England where they have a tiered system that largely complements the other.
“So we’ll be be thinking over the next week about whether we do need to have common approaches as far as possible, in terms of how we ask people to go about living their lives, and that may mean there will be some changes.
“We’ll think about that as England comes to the end of their four-week lockdown to try and give us all the headroom we want to have the sort of Christmas we want to have together.”
Details could be agreed “within the next few days” and Mr Gething said the Welsh Government hoped for “as common an announcement as possible”.
The news comes as it was confirmed 21 more people have died in Wales after testing positive for coronavirus and close to 600 new cases of the virus have been confirmed.
Public Health Wales said on Tuesday there were 595 new confirmed cases of Covid-19.