Stay-at-home rule may be lifted soon but Wales could be told ‘stay local’
PEOPLE in Wales may still not be able to travel far from where they live even after the “stay at home” rule is lifted.
Since December everyone in Wales has been told that they can only go outside their home if they have a reasonable excuse, like work, buying essentials or exercise. And while exercise has been permitted, driving to do so is not. Two weeks ago, at the last 21-day review, First Minister Mark Drakeford indicated that the stay-at-home rules would end. However, it does not automatically mean you will be able to travel as far as you like within Wales after this point.
At the Welsh Government press conference yesterday, we asked Health Minister Vaughan Gething: “Given you have said stay-home instructions are ending, does this mean people in Wales will be able to drive as far as they want to exercise or visit people at a social distance in 10 days? Would someone in Newport be able to drive to Tenby, or someone in Wrexham be allowed to drive to Snowdonia, for example?”
Mr Gething, who was standing in for the First Minister, who is self-isolating, replied that the Welsh Government was still considering making people stay within their local areas.
He said: “We have said we may be able to lift stay at home. We are considering what that then means. We are thinking about whether there will be a stay-local period or whether there should be travel permitted across the whole of Wales. That is a choice that the government needs to make and we haven’t concluded that.
“But there are, I think, very easyto-understand arguments about why we would want to have a period of ‘stay local’ before moving to wider travel and it is important to remember that at this point in time the restrictions in England mean that people shouldn’t be travelling from England into Wales. We know that the reality of essential travel for work is one thing but there shouldn’t be travel for leisure at this point in time.”
He added that Mr Drakeford would be announcing the new rules on Friday next week.
This will be the third time that Wales will have come out of lockdown restrictions. In the summer, when case numbers were really low, the Welsh Government brought in the so-called “five-mile rule”. Coming out of the firebreak in the autumn they imposed no such rule.
It would be hard to introduce restrictions on travel for any length of time if the Welsh Government then followed through with its plan to reopen self-catered accommodation at Easter.
Addressing this, Mr Gething said: “I do understand the point about self-contained accommodation and whether that is going to be viable if we still have a stay-local period as opposed to wider travel. Those are active considerations for the government but, as I said, we are yet to conclude our determination on those and the First Minister will announce that in just a week’s time.”
Mr Gething also said ministers want to get rates of Covid-19 in Wales “as low as possible” before any further significant relaxation of restrictions.
He said the government is due to publish new evidence to explain its way forward out of lockdown, but warned there is a danger in easing rules while mutations of the virus are in circulation.
“As we exit, and as we gradually ease those restrictions, we’re dealing with a much more infectious strain of the virus,” Mr Gething said.
“That’s one of the things that is behind the important caution we have about easing restrictions.”
He said forecasting what restrictions could be eased by the summer is “a real act of astrology”, adding it will be dependent on the public’s behaviour and its effect on transmission during the next few months.
The under-50s adult population will not have entirely received both doses of the vaccine by the middle of June, Mr Gething said, meaning there will still be “a range of people who haven’t been vaccinated who are susceptible to infection”.