80% of pupils ‘are currently going to school’

MORE than 80% of pupils are currently attending schools across Wales, First Minister Mark Drakeford said.

Of 99 schools and colleges in the country, a total of 66 pupils and 63 members of staff have received a positive test result for coronavirus.

The majority of schools have only one case, he said, although this is not true in hot spot areas in south-east Wales.

He added that there is no evidence of intraschool transmission in Wales so far.

“All those cases so far are cases where the person has contracted the virus outside the school, not inside the schools,” he said, adding there was no evidence that holidaymakers from England have spread the virus in Wales.

“Some of the areas where changes are being made in England are right along our border and they have an impact on us in Wales,” Mr Drakeford said, adding that this is why the Welsh Government is entitled to an opportunity to discuss them.

He said he has not been informed of whether the UK Government intends to impose travel restrictions in England.

If they are not, then there would be no restriction on people continuing to come to Wales for holidays, he said.

Mr Drakeford said the current state of the pandemic in Wales is similar to where the country was at the beginning of February.

“We’re not where we were when the lockdown itself was imposed later on in March,” he said.

“We’re a number of weeks behind that if you take Wales as a whole.”

But people should not take “false comfort” from that, the First Minister said.

He said it has been learnt that it’s possible to go from being in very low circulation to very high circulation very quickly.

“If we do not do the right things, we could be back there very quickly,” he said.