THE 17-DAY Fire-break lockdown in Wales will still end on November 9, regardless of a potential lockdown in England, the Welsh Government is insisting.
The confirmation comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson is considering new national lockdown measures for England, after scientists warned that half a million people were being infected with coronavirus each week.
Mr Johnson is expected to announce the measures for England, some national newspapers, including The Time, have said.
In England, everything except essential shops and education settings could be closed under the new measures but no final decisions are believed to have been made.
Health minister Vaughan Gething said: “We’ve been clear that we’re acting at this point, we’re acting to have a definitive fire-break. We’ll see the benefit of that come after the fire break ends.
“We’ve also been very clear with the new national set of rules we’ll have, we all need to do our bit and we as a government have a continuing responsibility to look at what’s happening and act on the basis of the evidence.”
“We won’t hesitate to act further if the situation demands it, but the plan is to reach 2021 without further intervention.
“We want to get to the end of the year, but if we need to act further before the end of the year then, of course, we’ll be prepared to do so.
Gething could not completely rule out another lockdown in Wales before January – he said: “None of us can know where exactly we’ll be in six weeks’ time let alone three months’ time.
“It would be foolish and just not honest to tell the public that we can rule out measures at some point in the future.”
He added: “In the future, we may have to act but this is what we think we can do if we all buy into a new way of living, to think of what we can do, to allow us all to get to the end of the year.
“And then, of course, we’ll have to reassess the position that we’re in.”
As we reported last week, another fire-break lockdown is likely in Wales in early January or February.
That is according to Deputy Economy and Transport Minister, Lee Waters, said the current firebreak was unlikely to be the last in Wales – with England “expected” to follow.
Speaking on BBC Radio Wales Sunday Supplement programme last week he said people should be prepared to come in and out of lockdowns until a Covid-19 vaccine is found.
He said: “This is not the last lockdown we are going to see the projections we published in a worst case scenario show it’s likely we are going to need another firebreak in January or
February.”
He added that Wales is now witnessing a second peak, with critical care admissions increasing by 57% this week alone, and that was why the Welsh Government has introduced this “short, sharp” intervention.”
