 Rhondder unedd eto,  Spiel digits This evening we will begin the two week fire brake period Two weeks in which we all need to do everything we can To break the rapidly rising cycle of infections we are seeing right across Wales Two weeks in which the law requires everyone to stay at home, and to work from home wherever possible That is why all non-essential shops, leisure, hospitality and tourism businesses will shut. And it's why we have put in place new rules for this two-week period to prevent people from gathering indoors and outdoors. If we are going to be successful and slow the spread of infection, we have to reduce contact between people wherever possible. This, as we've said before, is a short, sharp shock to the virus to turn back the clock and to ensure that our NHS is not overrun in the coming weeks. It is a short, sharp shock that will save people's lives. Now, the first slide that you will see helps to explain the efforts that people have made in Wales already and why they give us a platform from which this two-week period can succeed. Here you see a slide provided to us from Torfaen Council. It shows how, at the end of September, the amount of coronavirus in circulation in Torfaen was identical to a town in the north west of England. Since then, the efforts made by people in Torfaen and in all parts of Wales have helped us to keep the virus from getting completely out of control. And you will see the difference there between what has been achieved in Torfaen and what has happened elsewhere. The local restrictions have worked to stem the virus, but not to turn it back. And the clear advice we have is that we need to act urgently now because the virus is moving too fast. Yesterday we passed a new milestone in the course of this pandemic as more than a million tests were carried out in Wales since March. A further 1,134 confirmed cases were added to the overall number of infections, bringing the running total to more than 39,000. And very sadly, the death rate continues to rise. Today's figures bring the number of deaths reported by Public Health Wales to 45 this week. I've come to this podium a number of times in the summer to report days when nobody died at all and 45 people have died in this week. And we pause as we do for a moment to reflect on the loss of those people's lives and what that means to their family and to their loved ones. Now, there are those who seek to persuade us that coronavirus is all just a hoax, that it's a mild disease and it does no harm. The people who say that to you do not face the families of people who have died this week, who will never see and never speak to their loved one again. They will never face the hundreds more people in Wales who would die unless we act now to bring this deadly disease back under control. When I spoke to you last week, I said we faced a very real risk that the NHS in Wales could be overwhelmed in just a matter of weeks. And it's taken just six weeks for coronavirus to re-establish itself here in Wales. Every local authority area now, other than Ceredigion, has an incidence rate of more than 50 cases for every 100,000 people. And in many parts of Wales, and a growing number of parts of Wales, it's more than 100 cases for every 100,000. The impact on the NHS lags a few weeks behind the rise of cases in the community, but the rise is very real. This slide shows the number of people in hospital today with coronavirus symptoms. The top line, the grey line, shows the total number of people admitted to hospital with coronavirus. And it's made up of three different components. The bottom line, the yellow line, shows the growing number of people in hospital who are recovering from coronavirus. Long Covid, as it's sometimes called. The blue line are people in hospital with suspected coronavirus. They have to be treated in hospital identically as though they had confirmed coronavirus. And they are there in growing numbers too. And then the orange line, the people who have confirmed coronavirus. You can clearly see from this graph the steep rise from October onwards in the number of people with coronavirus symptoms being treated in Welsh hospitals. The numbers have almost doubled from around 500 at the start of this month to just under 900 yesterday. Now the NHS has started to open additional critical care capacity to ensure that it can manage all the demands on intensive care from emergency admissions, winter pressures and the pandemic. The latest figures from the NHS show that there are 47 people with coronavirus in critical care and that's more than doubled in just one week. And coronavirus has an impact on our NHS because people who suffer from it often have to stay in hospital for an extended period. The virus has a huge toll on those people's health and they can need hospital care for weeks and even months as they recover from the virus. And that's how we end up with hundreds of beds occupied by people at various stages of the disease. This final slide shows what the impact on the NHS would be if we were not taking action to bring coronavirus under control. The black line you see through the middle of this slide is the number of people who were in a hospital bed in Wales back in April when the last peak of coronavirus was seen here in Wales. And that was a very challenging time for the NHS with all planned routine operations postponed and many people needing critical care. The orange line at the start of the graph is the actual number of current cases. If the rise were to continue at the lowest possible rate, we would breach that black line, go above where we were in April, just before Christmas of this year. If the rate continues as it has been this week, we would breach that number late in November. And if the acceleration were to continue to gather pace as it has been, then we would breach that April number within the next couple of weeks. That is the seriousness of the position that we face. That is why we have decided here in Wales that a fire break period is absolutely necessary to bring that picture back under control. This slide shows why we have to act and have to act now. Now, as the fire break period begins, we will be working hard on what happens from the 9th of November onwards. Here in the Welsh Government over the next few days, we will be meeting with all the people who help to keep us safe. Our local authorities, the police, the trade unions and employers, the NHS, health boards and so on. Throughout the crisis, we have tried to involve all of these organisations whenever we are making key decisions, not after we have already made up our minds. Of course, involving people while the decisions are being made can take time. But it is time well spent because it means we make better decisions that protect us all. And we will of course report the conclusions of all those discussions to you. This week, we have held a press briefing every day to explain the reasons why we are introducing a fire break period, what it will involve and the support that will be available. Thank you, thank all of you who take such time and trouble to watch and to listen to these briefings. We will carry on holding the briefings as we look to the future. And this afternoon, I will be answering your questions in an Ask FM Facebook Live session beginning at 3 o'clock. Diolch yn fawr. Diolch o galon i chi gyd. I'll take some questions now from colleagues who are joining us and will broadcast all the answers as ever live on our own social media channels. First, this afternoon to James Williams at BBC Wales. Diolch yn fawr, First Minister. Can I get the answers in English and in Welsh, please? Businesses have felt left in the dark towards the end of this week. The Federation of Small Businesses said yesterday there was far too late in the day to announce which premises would be allowed to stay open as of 6 o'clock tonight. And then last night following your announcement in the committee that supermarkets would not be allowed to sell essential goods. The Welsh Retail Consortium said that without being told clearly what is and what isn't permitted to be sold, it is ill-conceived and short-sighted. Probably this is one person's essential, isn't it? There's none essential. Well, I don't agree with that. James, I sat with the FSB in the Social Partnership Council yesterday. They made none of those contributions when there was the opportunity for them to do so. Instead they focused on the positive actions that we are taking and working with them to make sure that as much information is available as quickly as possible. As we respond to the position that I set out and showed people in the graphs that people will have seen today. And when it comes to supermarkets it is a simple matter of fair playing. We are requiring many hundreds of small businesses to close on the high street right across Wales. We cannot do that and then allow supermarkets to sell goods that those people are unable to sell. And we are looking to minimise the amount of time that people spend out of their homes during this two-week period. This is not a period to be browsing around supermarkets looking for non-essential goods. So dwi ddim yn cytuno ar beth dweud o chi, James, dwi ges i cyfle i siarad gyda'r FSB ar y CBA i ddweud yn a consul yn ni'n gael beodd pobl yn dod a degilliddol ni'n gael o'r bwyntio. Ar y pethau ni'n wedi neud o wybodaeth ni wedi rhoi mas a cymorth ni'n mynd i rhoi i busnesau ledled Cymru yn ystod y pethaufnos nesaf. A pan i'n siarad am arch a fach naiodd matur o tecoch i we. Mae lot fawr o busnesau fach yn cael dros y pethaufnos nesaf ledled Cymru. A dwi ddim yn deg a mae nhw ddim yn gallu werthu pethau i'r ach a fachnodd a'n gallu neud ar un peth. A dwi'n i isio bobl a aros gyntre dros y pethaufnos nesaf hefyd. Nawr i ddim yn amser i mynd mas i siopa am pethau sydd ddim yn angen y radio. A dyna pam ni wedi rhoi, a rheoliadau ni wedi rhoi yn aile yma yn Cymru. Can you tell us what's the latest with those people in Wales who won't be able to be furloughed, but also won't be able to take advantage of JSS until the start of November. Will there be any financial support for them for their wages? Can you give us more detail on what are you planning to do now over this two and a half weeks in terms of building up capacity, sorting out TTP, testing turnaround and stuff? Can you just put a bit more flesh on the bones of that, please? Thank you, James. I'm yet to see a reply to my second letter to the Chancellor in which I set out an alternative set of proposals to smooth the path of people in Wales who will have to rely on one form of government support between the 23rd of October, the 30th of October, and then switch to a different system from the 1st of November. I regret the fact that the Chancellor was unable to create a single system to help people through that. In the meantime, we are going to announce today a further set of measures which we will take ourselves to assist people who will be defined out of help by the rules that the UK scheme has in place in that first period of the firebreak here in Wales. I hope the UK Government will do more. I hope it will help us to help those people who will need that support, but as we don't have a reply and as we're already on the Friday before the system comes into place, we will put Welsh Government money in place to assist those people who otherwise would not be assisted. And as I said in my opening statement, we will be working as a Cabinet over the coming days with our partners here in Wales to design the system that we will need beyond the 9th of November. The Cabinet met yesterday. Papers are circulated to Cabinet colleagues with the first set of ideas that we want to explore. Those will be now worked on by my colleagues with their portfolio teams. We will resume after the weekend. We will have further discussions with local authorities, police service in Wales, our partners in business and the trade unions and so on. And the Cabinet will reassemble on Tuesday and on Thursday of this week as we work our way through some complicated decisions. But as I said in my opening remarks, while it may take a bit more time to involve others, when you get those perspectives, when you get those views, then you make better decisions. And I will want to make the best decisions for Wales, not the most rapid ones. Over to Adrian, Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you First Minister for picking up on exactly that point you said, or it certainly gave the impression on Monday that that detail would be forthcoming today in this press conference on Friday. You're asking people to take quite a lot on trust about what will happen after November the 9th. Aren't they right to worry that this firebreak could be extended, or if not extended, then something very similar and almost as strict put in its place? Well I don't think I could have been clearer that the firebreak period comes to an end on Monday the 9th of November. So I'm very happy to repeat that again. That is how long it is designed to last for and that's when it will come to an end. Of course there will be a regime beyond that. Coronavirus will not have disappeared because of the actions and the efforts we will make over the next 17 days. And what I said earlier in the week is that by this time in the week we will be focusing on that and we met yesterday to plan how that can best be discharged. As I said we met in the social partnership council as well. It was another opportunity to involve our partners in all the thinking and all the planning that needs to be done. To get the best decisions you need to test these ideas with people who will be responsible for implementing them. You need to learn from them as to how we can act together in the best way beyond the firebreak to go on protecting people's lives. We will be working very hard like into next week and with our partners to make sure that we have a regime beyond the 9th of November that we share it with people in very good time for people to know what that will be. And it is better to take that bit of time and to get the best decisions that we can make rather than simply trying to beat a news cycle by rushing to announce things before they have been properly tested and thought through. Thank you. And on the issue of supermarkets and non-essential goods some of your critics have said that, more than said, accused you of making that decision because of your political beliefs that your form of politics is all about micromanaging, you favour restrictions and regulations. What do you say to them? I will say that I was plainly nonsensical. The decision is simply based on the need for fair play. I'm not prepared to treat small businesses in Wales in one way, requiring them to close. They are not able to earn a living during these two weeks as part of our national effort. And then simply because another sector in society are more powerful, are bigger, that they think that they can be treated differently. It is a straightforward matter of fairness. We are in this together here in Wales. No individual and no organisation is above the effort that we are all required to make. That includes people who may believe that they themselves are beyond the law and it includes those organisations that are large and powerful. We treat everybody the same. The obligations on every one of us are the same. That's the way we will be doing it in Wales. Thank you. Adrian, thank you. I look forward to Stephen Busch at the new statesman. First Minister, thank you. For many people around Wales, these restrictions will not feel that different to the restrictions that have been under for the last few weeks. As your chart shows, cases have fallen, but they have not fallen outside of the danger zone for the health service. While there is notionally a border separating at-risk areas from at-risk areas, there is a temporary self-enforcement which surveys consistently show is not happening at present. Why do you think that the lockdown measures that have been taken thus far have been insufficient, and do you think that's a problem that can be solved in Wales alone, or do you think it is a problem of England and Liverpool and Cheshire? Well, Stephen, thank you for that. I agree with a number of the points you've made. In Wales have helped a great deal to prevent the rapidity with which we see the virus rising in some other parts of the United Kingdom, and those efforts have been real. I want to make sure people know how much they have been appreciated. Actually, I don't think I would agree with your first proposition that people will not see a great deal of difference because the next two weeks are going to be very tough in Wales. We really are returning to the sort of lockdown that people saw back in March and April, and it will feel qualitatively different even to the restrictions that have been in place so far, and that's why a firebreak is recommended to us by SAGE, by our own chief medical officer and technical advisory group because it is a different form of intervention. It is a sharp, deep form of restriction that creates that break in the transmission of the virus. We think it will work in Wales to this extent. Not that it will magic the virus away. Not that we will emerge on the 9th of November not needing to worry about it, but that it will reset the clock and allow us to get through to Christmas without needing to see a period of such significant restraint again. Other governments are trying to deal with the situations they face in different ways. I was very taken by the fact that we were unanimously presented with advice in the Welsh government from our chief medical officer, our chief scientist, our chief team of advisers, that a firebreak was the best course of action for us in Wales to adopt, and that's why we have gone about it in that way. Thank you. Christmas. Gwyn Gething said yesterday that none of these efforts were partly about saving Christmas, but for many people who live across the border, who have family on the other side of it, they face a very different view. Do you envisage a situation in which Christmas happens as normal if you are in Wales, but if you are from Wales, you still face the inability to cross back to see your family? Well, as I think Vaughan said yesterday, these measures are about saving lives, not saving Christmas. That's the seriousness of the position we are in. Our ambition is that we will not need to have this level of restriction again in Wales before Christmas. I want shops to be able to trade. I want people to be able to prepare. I want to offer people some hope, provided we all do the right thing. Then we will still be able to enjoy a version of the holiday that we would have otherwise all enjoyed. Nobody should... Well, at least here in Wales, we will never approach the whole business of the pandemic on the basis that we can say to people, it will all be over by Christmas. It won't all be over by Christmas. But there are things that we can do and we can do together to make sure that Christmas of a coronavirus sort can still be celebrated here in Wales. How that will mesh in with the difficulties that are being faced elsewhere in the United Kingdom is just impossible to predict. Let us hope that. The measures that are being put in place elsewhere succeed as well, and then we will all be able to meet with family, with friends, have some sort of Christmas in which there is still something for us all to celebrate. Thank you very much, Stephen. Over to Will Hayward at Wales Online. Thank you, First Minister. Regarding shops only being allowed to sell essential items, Astor have said that they are deeply concerned for the implications for customers accessing products they genuinely need. How can you possibly define what the criteria for an essential item is? Most people would not consider a candle essential, but what if you have a power cut, and books are not considered essential, but what about books offering guidance on health or mental health? If my child rips their school trousers, is it not essential that I buy more? How do you go about defining the criteria for an essential item is? Well, it is just the wrong way to approach this whole business. We're back to the how do we get around the rules approach to coronavirus. If we start going about it in that way, we will simply not succeed. But the question I want people in Wales to ask themselves is not what can I do and what can't I do, but what should I do and what shouldn't I do. What you shouldn't do is to use the next two weeks to do things that you don't need to do. And there will be remote contingencies of the sort, no doubt, that you have described and people will in inventive way they have find ways of solving them without undermining the effort that we are asking people to make. There is a bigger prize at stake here than whether you need to buy a candle or not. OK, it is just about providing information to people because some people will be desperate to stay within the rules and might actually are on the side that they do need in order to obey these rules to help save lives. If I could just ask you about the comparison you made between Oldham and Torfaen, given you've indicated recently that Welsh Government will only publish data that is useful and not potentially misleading. Oldham has 237,000 people, the vast bulk of whom effectively live in densely populated packed terraced streets on the edge of Greater Manchester. How is that comparable to 93,000 people living in a disparate community spread across 126 square kilometres in the South Wales Valleys? Are they comparable situations? Well, let's be clear what the graph does is to look at rates, not numbers. So it's rates per 100,000, not raw numbers. So the fact that Oldham is bigger than Torfaen is not misrepresented at all in the graph. I think there's an important point you make that the circumstances of Oldham will not be identical to Torfaen, but Torfaen is a South East Wales Valleys authority. It has lots of densely populated housing in it, people living close by, one another. The comparison will not be exact in a number of dimensions, but the difference between the graph, nevertheless illustrates something very important, that the efforts that have been made in that part of Wales have helped to keep the virus from spiralling out of control and being at the levels that we see in some other parts of the United Kingdom, where those level 3 restrictions that people are facing are not for two weeks, as people in Wales are being asked to observe them, but will go on potentially for many months and I just wanted to say to people in Wales don't think that what you have done has not been worthwhile. It has been important, it will go on being important and you could see that illustrated in that graph. Will, thank you. Over to Adam, Adam Hale at PA. I'm glad he believed me like you guys sell businesses complaining they've been giving just hours to prevent non-essential items being assault in their stalls. Again, got a situation where it appears details of a major decision appears to be getting worked out or announced at least at the last minute and could be another example of your government announcing a major decision and then working out the details later on, which is something like you previously said you wouldn't do. Do you think on reflection that this could have been handled better? Look, we are making decisions under huge pressure of events and making them as quickly as we are able. When I stood here on Monday at quarter past 12 the Cabinet had finished meeting at 11.30 taking the final decisions. It is then a rush to try and make sure that we are able to communicate that as fast as we can and as accurately as we can and you can be sure that right through the week we have every day hundreds of questions being put to us of detail. We are still wanting to make sure as Will Haywood said that they know the rules and they do the right thing. It is inevitable that not every decision can be made on the first day and it's why we gave a whole week a working week from the day we announced the decision to the point at which it comes into practice so that we could answer those questions and we could try to provide the very best information that we can. We said from the very beginning that non-essential retail would close in Wales. All we are doing is clarifying that and remaining consistent with that initial decision. We've heard suggestions this week from people working in intensive care in Wales that insufficient capacity and under-revetiment in intensive care services before this pandemic struck is the reason or perhaps in part why you haven't introduced this tough lockdown now. Do you have any regrets or do you agree with that assessment and if you do, do you have any regrets about the funding that intensive care units have been given in Wales over recent years, including when you were health minister? The health service in Wales has suffered from a decade of austerity alongside every other public service that we face and right across the United Kingdom I think it can be argued that we have been less well prepared for coronavirus than we would have been had we not seen that ten long years of under-investment in our public services by a UK Government determined to tell us that that money couldn't be found. Well we know now that that wasn't the case because when we needed to find money during this pandemic we've been able to find it and we could have found it then as well and our public services would have been all the better for it. Here in Wales we did invest in our critical care capacity when I was the health minister and when von Gethin has been health minister because we had to do it alongside our organ donation bill. We had to provide extra critical care capacity to be able to respond to the fact that we would have more people willing to provide organs in the Welsh NHS. That's not to say that more could not have been done. But with our fantastic workers in the health service we have more critical care capacity today than we otherwise would have done and we've got plans that allow us to create even more capacity over the weeks and months ahead if that becomes necessary. Adam Dicholfawr over to Mike Hughes at LBC. Thank you very much indeed first minister. I'm going to come back to the topic of the exit strategy from this firebreak lockdown if I may. You are asking people to go into a set of restrictions here with very little or to no information about how the world or how Wales is going to look at the back end of this on the 9th of November. Can you at least share some of the detail as to what some of the options on the table are. I think business would be very keen to know how Wales could look on the other side of this. People just the general public would like to know how they can go about their lives at the back end of this and of course can you talk about potentially if something like the three tier system which has been adopted in England being discussed in Scotland is something that you're discussing within the Welsh Government. Thank you very much Mike. Well I'm not able of course to anticipate the results of all the discussions that I set out to when I made my opening statement but I can tell people the sorts of things that we will be looking at. I don't think any of them will be a surprise to anybody so here are just three things. Of course we will be looking at the reopening of businesses and trying to make sure that we reopen businesses in the way that is safe for people who work in them and for people who use them. We will be looking at travel. We've had travel restrictions as part of our local lockdown arrangements. What travel arrangements will we be able to offer to people after the 9th of November? And we'll be looking most importantly of all at how households operate. Just repeat what I've said a number of times and other colleagues have from this platform. Coronavirus spreads inside households. Coronavirus loves it when people get together and we've got to find ways in which we can allow people to meet with those who are closest to them while not going back to situations where the virus has been able to spread and run away from us in the way we've seen in the last six weeks. There are three other things that we will be looking at and working on together to find answers for people and we'll give people those answers well before the 9th of November and there will be answers created alongside those people implementing them and dealing with the consequences of them. There was a second part to what you asked me and I've temporarily mislead it. The three-tier system was that some rules to consider? Thank you. We have only 22 local authorities here in Wales where a much smaller place than England and smaller even than Scotland. So we need to be sure that three tiers are necessary to distinguish between the rate of the virus in different parts of Wales. In recent weeks what has been happening is is that those parts of Wales where the virus was effectively suppressed have sadly been catching up with those parts of Wales where we'd seen earlier difficulty. So what we will look at is a system that works for us rather than a system that we have copied because other people are using it. It will need to be one that is suitable both to our size or geography and to the state of play in the virus as we come out of the firebreak period. Mike, thank you to Steve Bagnell of the Daily Post. Thank you Minister. At what point could the rainbow hospitals be brought into use given the rising cases? How close are we to that and is there enough staff to man them if they are needed? Steve, thank you. We are ready using Aspatisaren which is a field hospital here in the Cwmtaf Morgannog area which has been open now for nearly a week and was receiving patients before the weekend. Of course we have plans to staff them. It is a stretch and sometimes ask questions about money and resources we've had one this afternoon. If you've got the money you can turn the tap on. So when we are staffing our field hospitals we will be having to redeploy staff we've got to ask more of the people we have in our health service and when I stood here on Monday I tried to make the point to that. One of the many reasons why we are so determined to act to prevent our health service from being overwhelmed is that when we have that huge demand it falls on the shoulders of those people who we've relied on already in our health service and who have been under such pressure during this calendar year. So all health boards have plans we will use the fortnight to draw some of those plans forward to make sure that they are absolutely ready should we need to open more field hospital capacity and then the staffing model for those places has been worked out in agreement with the people who have to deliver health services at the front line. Thank you. You have touched on this. Confirmed daily cases now appear to be around double what we had at the peak of the pandemic in the first wave in April. Is the rise predominantly down to community transmission or is there more of a mix of factors which are causing the rise? There's still a mix of factors as there has been throughout. Those figures, the number of cases each day now includes a significant number of students in higher education which we wouldn't have seen earlier in the year. We still have some workplace outbreaks but the predominant one the one that is driving these numbers is the way we all behave. The way we behave as human beings the natural way we behave it's not to criticise the way people behave but the unfortunate thing is is that when we behave in that way when we go in and out of each other's houses where we act in the way that we would expect to have acted in a house coronavirus thrives and we've somehow got to find ways in which we all persuade ourselves as I said earlier the question for now and for the other side of the firebreak is not what can I do but what should I do and if we all ask ourselves that am I doing the right thing if we do that then I think we will make a significant impact on the problems that we have faced. Steve, thank you very much. I go to Thomas Moody in the South Wales Argus. Thank you First Minister. So here in Gwent the Anarang Bevan University Health Board has currently got the highest number of hospital onset coronavirus cases in Wales with the Grange due to open in mid November with how much notice can that opening be brought forward should there be that demand? Well the Grange Hospital opening has been brought forward to mid November Thomas as you know it was scheduled for next year I don't anticipate that it will be able to open very much earlier than the date we've already given and anarang bevan health board is not planning on it being available to it ahead of the current handover date but it's coming very soon and it's coming a lot faster than we had originally anticipated and those beds will now be available in that part of Wales for this winter. Okay, thank you and we've touched on this a little already but given that you've said a large number of cases are due to community transmission and people going around and visiting each other at each other's home given that much of Wales has been under local restrictions where meeting at home hasn't been allowed but still has been going on. What makes this lockdown any different? Well it is an attempt to send a message to people who may not have been acting as carefully as they need to of the seriousness of the consequences of that. Showing those figures to people today 900 people in our hospital beds already up from 500 at the start of this month. The number of people in critical care doubling in a week. The 40 and more people who have died this week. The two week period is an attempt to concentrate all our minds on the things we all need to do and the consequences of what follows if we don't. So by putting a fire break period in we can all reset. We can reset the way that we ourselves behave. We can reset the way in which the virus is circulating and together we can make that difference. I think that over the summer and it's completely understandable as the weather was good and the numbers were going down some people took the message from that that somehow this was all over and that if they took a few more risks themselves it really wouldn't matter. So what I notice is that those risks all add up and cumulatively they have led us to the position we are facing today. And as I say we have to reset that we have to reset it in people's minds we have to reset it in the way that people behave provided we can do that we have a reset in the demands that we are seeing on our health service and the impact in people's lives. Thomas thank you very much for that you say the essential good rule that mainly affects supermarkets being brought in to ensure fair play to protect small retailers is this a straightforward principle of fairness if you are not taking action against internet retailers and if it is protecting closed businesses and we are alling it together will supermarket alcohol sales also be stopped to ensure fair play for the hospitality trade? Well alcohol sales in supermarkets are already restricted and we have introduced rules there that apply in Wales that don't apply anywhere else when the supermarket sector is a very mature very responsible sector it will want to do the right thing it's demonstrated that in the way that it implements our alcohol rules here in Wales and I have every confidence that it will do the right thing in relation to the sale of non-essential goods the Welsh Government doesn't have the powers to do things about internet sales that is a UK wide responsibility that only the UK Government can discharge and I've had many conversations with the retail consortium here in Wales before the pandemic about the unfairness of the system in which internet businesses are treated in one way and high street businesses are treated in another and we previously made the case to the church to change the rules for online businesses so that they contribute their fair share to the national effort in terms of taxation in terms of the way they trade alongside other businesses but those are not decisions that lie in the hands of the Welsh Government Thank you in the latest TTP update there's a distinction drawn between Wales wide data in terms of positive cases reached and subsequent tracing of contacts can you explain what's happened recently in Cardiff and what's been done to make sure the issue is not repeated there and also across Wales? Well I can't assure you on the second point because what's happened in Cardiff I think is possibly a lesson for what we might be able to do elsewhere which is that the university in Cardiff has taken responsibility itself for the contact tracing of its student body and they are in some ways better placed to do it than the TTP system because they are already in touch with their students they know exactly where they live and by taking the responsibility for the tracing of contacts of its own population our TTP system has been able to concentrate on non-student populations here in Cardiff so that's why we've reported them differently because they're being followed up in two different ways now we will learn from that we will see how that works and it may be something that we would be able to do elsewhere so it's not a mistake or something that we need to correct it is a deliberate decision arrived at with our university here in Cardiff which we think is a more effective way of reaching those young people and as I say freeze up the capacity of the TTP system to trace people who are not living in student accommodation and not under the broad care of the university authorities Rob, thank you to Andrew Nuttall of the leader Thank you Minister not to get away from people trying to get around the rules but simply for clarity what does the Welsh Government following these discussions as an essential item in supermarkets can people find this information to save them like you said which is against the rules to travel in from place to place trying to find these things if they are not going to be available but having these things out in the open just prevent people from making non-essential visits so the way people will find out is that those parts of supermarkets will not be open for trading so individuals do not need to go searching for the information because it will be immediately apparent to them when they make a visit this is a period of two weeks that we are asking people to make this effort and if there are genuine cases of people who cannot find something that is essential to them in a supermarket there will be other ways in which that problem can be solved as I said people are very inventive they have friends, they have neighbours who are in a Welsh context we know are very often very willing to help there are online ways that people can purchase goods as we were just hearing in Rob's question it is not a problem without a solution on the issue of borders here in north Wales we will absolutely be very close to neighbouring areas in England we obviously won't have this fire break in place and you've said in the past that the police and these rules for Welsh people will be crucial to make sure that is a success how can that message be spread to England and potentially stop people from coming this side of the border with the virus well I do think that the whole experience of the pandemic has made people far more aware of where different decisions are made for different populations and I think that is true for people in England as well as here we have a lot of interest from people who live on the other side of the border making sure that they know what the rules are here in Wales the decisions the Welsh Government is taking we are making an effort here in the Welsh Government to place articles in local newspapers right across right along the border to make sure that we provide information to local radio stations and others to inform their local populations obviously everything we put up on the website in terms of frequently asked questions and so on is available to people right on the world not just simply in Wales or even along the border so I'm not at all arguing that the border doesn't bring some complexity it clearly does and especially to people who move across the border every day but I think people are more used to that being before they're more willing to go and look for the information they need and as a Welsh Government we are doing more than we've ever done before to make sure that that information is directly made available to media outlets who serve those populations just across or border and into England Andrew thank you very much and finally to Tom Magner of Carers World Thank you First Minister can I just explore a couple of issues on test, trace and protect according to care forum Wales nearly 30% of care homes over a two week period that's one to two testing cycles had positive results from lighthouse labs shown on retest by public health Wales to be false positives your technical advisory group puts a maximum acceptable limit of just 0.9% on false positives based on the reported prevalence of COVID-19 among care homes staff being just under 1% with a confirmed false positive there's clearly COVID-19 viral DNA detected but not from the person tested so the odds seem to favour laboratory contamination as each false positive has serious consequences for home care home residents and staff what action are you taking and what pressure are you exerting on the laboratories to eliminate contamination and bring false positives down below the maximum accepted by your expert group Tom, I'm not sure that I understand the complexities of all of this well enough to be sure that it is laboratory contamination because the test themselves are not 100% accurate they are very accurate but they are not 100% accurate and as you know the lower the percentage of people who test positive is the more false positives the test throws up so there may well be some elements of laboratory contamination in all of this but it may well not be the whole of the explanation laboratories are under huge pressure you can imagine they're doing volumes that they've never done before they understand the need for speed so they're under pressure to turn tests around very quickly we have that safeguard in the well system of a retest to make sure that if it wasn't accurate the first time you get a second goal to make sure that we get the right answer and in some ways that is the major safeguard we have in place Thank you for that we'll perhaps explore the complexities another time and I understand and correct me if I'm wrong that the Welsh Government has bought 45 quick antigen testing machines presumably validated and as I understand it and do please correct me if I'm wrong these are being used in A&E departments Care for and Wales tells us that basing these machines in care homes instead would give much needed one hour point of care results would offer spare capacity for local community testing and as well on the science give contact traces 47 hours for all the person's contact to be traced before they become contagious and pass on the virus wouldn't adopting this quick test approach would they bring the virus under control having to rely on what are seen as broad brush lockdown Well of course Tom we are very keen to have tests that can be done with very quick turnaround times and the machines that you've mentioned are one of the experiments that are being mounted in Wales there are others which operate in different ways the place we'd like to be if we had a litmus test of the sort that pregnancy testing kits use and there are tests of that sort in development and we hope to have them piloted here in Wales as part of that development soon the 40 machines are a down payment on a far larger number of machines that we have ordered and provided the money for here we are using them in A&E departments to begin with because that is the safest place to use an experimental technology because you've got everything else you need in a hospital setting if you need a different sort of test or to respond to somebody in a different way we are optimistic that they are going to be more widely useful and we are very happy of course to talk to Care Forum Wales as to whether or not if we were able to deploy that sort of test like it that gives you a much faster turnaround time that that would allow us to reopen care homes for visitors being acutely conscious was asked questions about this yesterday when I was in front of a Senedd committee acutely conscious of the impact which restricting visits has on people who are being looked after in our care sector here in Wales Thank you very much indeed. 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