Table service in pubs & restaurants to return?
FIRST Minister Mark Drakeford has hinted that table service could return in pubs and restaurants across Wales in a bid to tackle the spread of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.
Mr Drakeford, who yesterday evening attended a Cobra meeting with the UK Government and other devolved nations – at which the amount of additional funding available for the governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland was doubled from £430m to £860m – said the Welsh Government was considering the “full range of possibilities” for the hospitality industry, and would be making decisions this week.
Speaking on the BBC’s Politics Wales programme yesterday, he said the Welsh Government is the only one in the UK to have so far announced restrictions to come in force immediately after Christmas, with nightclubs having to close.
Acknowledging Wales was “marginally” advantaged by being a week or so behind the rest of the UK with the spread of the Omicron variant, he also described the period as “the calm before the storm” and confirmed further restrictions would be considered by minsters this week.
He said: “I think the restrictions we are introducing after Christmas will help. Nightclubs will close, but it is not just nightclubs, the rules for work places, for retail are changing.
“We will be working this week on the rules about how hospitality will reopen after Christmas.
“I think it is inevitable when hospitality reopens we will need to build some extra defences into the way they operate, otherwise people will not turn up there. That is the thing to remember, the reason we are doing this is for business reasons as well as health reasons”.
Mr Drakeford said the government would be “looking back to the sorts of measures which we needed earlier in the pandemic”, adding: “People will remember, it is not that long ago that you went to a restaurant, your details were collected so they could be used for track and trace, that you ordered from where you sat, that you wore a mask when you moved around, not when you were eating and drinking, but if you were moving around the restaurant you used a mask when you moved around.”
He also said: “I’m not saying [the rule of six] isn’t on the list of things we will consider, but there are measures you can take before that and we will obviously be looking at the less intrusive measures first.”
Referring to sporting events traditionally held over the Christmas period, including regional rugby derbies and the Welsh Grand National, Mr Drakeford said: “I think the full range of possibilities is still there. A lot of safeguards are built into some of those venues and they are out of doors, so we are getting fresh advice from our public health experts as to whether or not it is still safe to go ahead with those matches.
“If they are not safe to go ahead as they are now, could you go ahead with a reduced number of people? Could you go ahead behind closed doors? Is it not safe to go ahead at all?
“All of those possibilities will be there, and the cabinet will meet again to thrash our way through the advice we’ve got and the choices that are there to be made.”
Quizzed on potential help for nightclub staff following the closures of venues on December 27, Mr Drakeford said the Welsh Government had put “£60m on the table” for the sector, and would be looking at what support could be provided, with just over 100 venues likely to be affected across the country. But he reiterated that a furlough scheme like that earlier in the pandemic would need the support of the UK Treasury and dismissed claims there was a £500m “rainy day” fund for Wales.
He said: “That money is there already to account for the fact we are running a much faster vaccination programme. That has to be paid for.
“We will need a TTP system right through the rest of this financial year, we need to invest in schools to support our children.
“The money is not sitting on a shelf doing nothing. That money is committed for all the other things we need to do, every penny of it will be spent. We are finding whatever we can for business support, but the idea there is a big stack of cash looking for something to do is frankly nonsensical.”
Meanwhile, last night Chancellor Rishi Sunak confirmed increased funding following discussions with the devolved administrations.
The Treasury said the additional amounts now being provided to each government – on top of their Autumn Budget 2021 funding – are £270m to the Welsh Government, £440m to the Scottish Government and £150m to the Northern Ireland Executive.
Elsewhere, a leading doctor warned that Wales is likely to see a “tsunami of cases” of the Omicron variant in coming weeks.
Dr Giri Shankar, professional lead for health protection at Public Health Wales, said that new restrictions due to come into force after Christmas might not be enough to stop Covid-19 once again becoming a burden on the healthcare system.
On the weekend, more than 10,000 further Omicron cases were confirmed in the UK, of which only 91 were in Wales. Of the 91 new cases, 25 were recorded in the Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board area, 17 in Cardiff and Vale, 16 more in both the Aneurin Bevan and Swansea Bay health board areas, 13 in Betsi Cadwaladr UHB and four in the Powys Teaching Health Board.
Dr Shankar said the fact that Omicron numbers in Wales are currently better than those in parts of England and Scotland does not mean that a huge leap in cases is not on the way.
“We appear to be a week or two behind what London, most parts of England, and Scotland are seeing,” Dr Shankar told the BBC’s Politics Wales yesterday. “We need to make that work to our advantage because the higher the cover with booster vaccination, the better.”
Dr Shankar, part of the group which advises the Welsh Government, said that more measures might have to be taken sooner rather than later, on top of those coming into force from December 27.
“I think we may well see a situation where, despite all those measures and with good compliance to those measures, we may still find that the case numbers and the burden on the system may be such that we might need additional restrictions,” he added.