 Wel, prynhau'n dda ar blwyddyn nhw i ddweud dda i chi gyd. This week, the Welsh Government has carried out the first review of our alert level 4 measures, the lockdown measures, which have been in place since a week before Christmas. We took immediate action then because a new, highly infectious strain of the virus had been identified in parts of north and south Wales. As you will have seen in the news, the rest of the United Kingdom has since followed and is now in lockdown as well. The new strain of the virus has taken a firm foothold in north Wales, where we are seeing cases of the virus rising rapidly. We expect the new strain will become the dominant form of the virus in south Wales as well. The use of coronavirus remain high in Wales, as you can see on this slide. There has been a fallback from the very high levels, which we saw before Christmas, and before the alert level 4 restrictions were introduced. You can see that on the right-hand side of the slide, the effect of the actions that we have taken. Over the last few days, that fall has stalled and rates have began to creep up again. On Monday of this week, there were around 440 cases for every 100,000 people in Wales, and today that is 20 points higher. It is still the case that around one in four tests is positive for coronavirus, and all of that demonstrates that we still have very high levels of this virus circulating in the community in Wales. There is no evidence that the new strain causes a more serious illness, but it is undoubtedly adding to the pressures that our NHS is experiencing at the moment. More than 2,700 coronavirus-related patients are being cared for in a Welsh hospital today, and there are now 143 people with coronavirus in critical care beds, and overall, a number of people in critical care has reached the highest point at any moment in the pandemic. The new strain is undoubtedly adding a new dangerous dimension to the public health crisis. Wherever there is mixing, wherever people come together, the new strain is spreading. It is highly contagious and spreads very quickly from person to person. This is the background against which we have carried out the three-weekly review of the current restrictions. The outcome of that review will not be a surprise against that background, and it is that the lockdown will continue for another three weeks to the 29th of January when it will be reviewed again. In the meantime, we will be strengthening the alert level four measures in three main areas. First, we will work with our major supermarkets and retailers to make sure that people are safe when we go out shopping. I wanted to see at least the same level of protection today as was very visible in the early period of the pandemic. Those who work and shop in supermarkets need to be confident that the numbers in those stores are carefully and consistently controlled and that all other measures are there in place to keep us all safe. The key instruction in the Wales lockdown is to stay at home, but some people are unable to work from home, so the second area that we will look to strengthen is protection in the workplace. This new strain of virus is so much more infectious that we have to look again at the defences in place to keep Wales safe and workplaces safe, working with employers and trade unions to do so. The third area for strengthening is in schools and colleges. We are bringing decisions about schools and colleges into line with a three week review cycle to give parents and staff as much certainty as we can at this very uncertain time. Most young people will now be taught online until the 29th of January, and unless there is a significant further reduction in cases of COVID-19 by the next review, this will continue until February half-term. In the meantime, vulnerable learners and children of critical care workers will continue to have face-to-face learning, and childcare remains open in Wales. We will use the coming weeks to work with our scientists, unions and local authorities to plan for the future, and that will not be a simple choice between closing schools and colleges now and reopening them in February. We will look at all the possibilities for a phased and safe return of some students during this period, such as those studying for qualifications by youngest children who find distance learning most difficult and vulnerable children in our society. I want to be clear that schools and colleges have not suddenly become unsafe. They do not pose an increased risk to teachers or to students, but keeping them open does encourage children and adults to mix inside and outside the school gates at a time when cases of coronavirus are high in the community and where we have a very infectious strain spreading quickly. Now, of course, I wanted to thank everyone for following the rules and helping to keep Wales safe, and it is always frustrating when a small minority act as though those rules did not apply to them. I want everyone to know that when people knowingly and persistently break the rules, action will be taken. Too many lives have been lost to this awful virus to allow anybody to believe that they do not share in the responsibility that binds us all. Now our police and local authorities have been doing an incredible job at enforcing the rules and they have my full support. Over the Christmas period, our police have had thousands of conversations with people about the regulations. They have stopped hundreds of cars to make sure that people are leaving home only for a legitimate reason and they have issued more than 300 fines for breaches of the rules. And this stepped up enforcement effort will continue. Now none of us wanted to start the new year in lockdown. But as difficult as and challenging as these early weeks are, we can still look forward to a better 2021 and a route out of this pandemic. About 50,000 people in Wales have already received their first COVID vaccine and thousands more will get the job today. Right across Wales, our fantastic NHS staff are doing everything they can to vaccinate as many people as quickly and as safely as possible. We started with just seven vaccination centres. Today we have 22 and that will rise to 35. At the start of next week, 75 GP practices will be vaccinating. It will be up to 100 by next Friday and up to 250 by the end of the month. And we now have 14 mobile units providing vaccinations to care homes around Wales. That rollout will carry on getting faster in the weeks ahead. All frontline ambulance staff in Wales will have had their first dose by next week and we will extend vaccination to staff working in special schools and to school and college staff who are at risk in line with the latest advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. On Monday, we will begin publishing daily figures of the number of people being vaccinated and the Health Minister will publish our vaccination plan next week. The two vaccines that have already been approved offer us a chance of a different and better future. But for now, we must all stay at home to protect the NHS and to save lives. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi gyd. I'll now take questions as usual and all the answers as usual will be broadcast live on our social media channels. I think today the first question is coming from Tilleri Glyn-Jones of BBC Wales. Pounder, Prif, gweinidog, can you explain the rationale for not announcing these changes to when schools will reopen on Monday? Yr un cwestiwn yn gymraeg, allwch chi ysbonio pam eich bod chi wedi cael ei ddweud hyn hefyddiw yn hytrach na ddydd llun? Well, the reason is that circumstances change so rapidly in relation to coronavirus and things can change in just a matter of days. On Friday, the chief medical officers of the United Kingdom raised the alert level across the United Kingdom from four to five. We have further evidence this week of the continuing spread of the new strain of coronavirus in Wales. We've continued to have conversations during the week with our teaching unions, the unions representing other staff in school and colleges and with our local education authorities. It is all that extra development that has led us today to decide to bring the decision-making on schools and colleges into line with a three-week decision-making cycle. It offers the best certainty we can provide in these very uncertain times and it allows our college and school leaders to plan for the weeks ahead. Our ambition as a Welsh Government is to have children back in school. Our children lost out so much last year, but we have to take those difficult decisions in the context that we face and the context we face today is one of the new strain of virus seeding in all parts of Wales with the pressures that that brings to bear and we have to do everything in all aspects of our lives to try to bear down on that. Mae mwy o wybodaeth dan ni ar y straen newydd o coronavirus yn sydd mae hwnna yn leda ni dros Gymru gyfan. Ni'n wynebu ar gyfwng mewn iechyd â cyhoedd, a mae'n pwysig i ni'n neud popeth, ni'n gallu neud, o'n pob cwr o bobadau ni i helpu i delio gyda'r problemau ni'n wynebu a'n angros ynaethau iechyd. Dyna pam ni wedi'u neud, y penderfyniadau ni wedi'u neud, a dyna pam dwi'n cyhoedd i fi ben i wedi ddweud am ysgolion o colegau am yng Nghymru hefyd. Y Llywydd, on the rollout of the vaccine, have there been differences in the approach between what happens here in Wales and what happens in other parts of the UK? Will we catch up or will we always be in fourth place? Well, the differences are marginal, but there are some differences. We have put more emphasis on vaccinating frontline staff in the health and social care sector, but we are all following the advice of the JCVI. We are all using the same priority groups. We are all working hard to make sure that we vaccinate as many people as quickly and as safely as possible. I have faced this question about where Wales is in relation to other parts of the UK repeatedly during the whole history of coronavirus. I well remember standing here being asked why we were lagging behind as it was said in relation to PPE, and yet Wales never ran out of PPE, and we have ended up supplying PPE to other parts of the UK. I remember being asked why our testing regime wasn't the same as it was in other parts of the UK, and yet we have the most successful TTP system anywhere in the UK, and one that has been achieved at a fraction of the cost across or border. Vaccination is neither a sprint nor a contest. We will roll out vaccination here in Wales as quickly as we are able in order to make sure that, over the weeks ahead, the maximum number of people in those priority groups are vaccinated here in Wales, and that is the same effort that colleagues in governments in other parts of the UK will be carrying out in their parts of the UK as well. Teleridioch will go to Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you, First Minister. Could you perhaps clarify how people should behave once they've received the vaccine? Can they act as they used to before the pandemic happened, and once they've had a second dose, the booster jab, can they behave as normal then? My advice to people who have received the vaccination, both at first and second doses, is that they should continue to act carefully and sensitively to the context that we are in, because the first people who will be vaccinated will still be living in a community where there are other people who are going on contracting the virus and where the level of the virus is high. So, while the vaccination will undoubtedly provide significant levels of protection, that protection will be delivered in a context where coronavirus is still very widespread and a new variant of coronavirus is spreading in all parts of Wales. So, my advice to people who are receiving the vaccine is to continue to act in a precautionary way to recognise the new protection that they have, but to recognise as well that for many weeks and for some months ahead coronavirus is going to continue to be a feature of all our lives, and given that we are vaccinating the most vulnerable people and those people who come into contact with others with coronavirus to the greatest extent, then a precautionary approach would still be recommended. Thank you, and given what you've announced for schools today, the fact that, by the change in the way that you're assessing or reviewing them rather, that they might not be going back for some time yet, given that disruption, are you as a government considering opening schools through the summer so that pupils can catch up? Well, I want to use the weeks ahead for a series of conversations with our colleagues in the education world. We want to make sure that we carry out fresh risk assessments of schools in the light of the new strain of the virus. We will look at the advice of SAGE in relation to further protective measures that could be put in place in schools. I want to talk with teacher and other unions about how we can draw more young people safely back into schools over the weeks ahead, and we will want to talk with them about that wider picture as well. We've already committed £29 million in Wales to a catch-up programme to make good the loss of education that our young people suffer during 2020. That has been very enthusiastically grasped by schools across Wales, taking advantage of those opportunities, and I will want to talk with others about how we can, in the rest of 2021, look at further ways in which we can make good the loss of face-to-face education which our young people have experienced, and which we are having to face again in the circumstances that are currently pertaining across Wales. Adrian, thank you very much. Over to Andy Davis of Channel 4. Thank you. The Prime Minister has pledged to offer vaccines to everyone in the top four priority groups in England by the middle of February. That equivalent group in Wales numbers around 750,000. The Welsh Government has said that it's receiving just over 100,000 more doses over the next three weeks. Isn't the reality that unless the supply of vaccines increases massively, there's simply no chance of Wales being able to meet that same target? Well, I heard Andy what the Prime Minister said. He said if absolutely everything went according to plan and if there was a following wind, then he hoped that he would get to the point that he mentioned. Now, he will be as dependent as we are on supply of the vaccine to reach that target. I absolutely share the same ambition to get those top four priority groups vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine as fast as we possibly can. That depends on two things. It depends on our ramping up the capacity to deliver the vaccine, and I set out some of that earlier, but it does crucially depend, as you say, on the supply of the vaccine coming into Wales. We now know how much of the Oxford vaccine we will have in Wales next week, and we know that in the week after we will see a significant rise in the volume of that supply. If we are to be able to complete the vaccination of those four priority groups, that volume of supply will have to accelerate even further. For that, we are dependent upon the UK purchase and distribution, and I have no reason at all to think that the people who are responsible for that are not doing everything they can to make sure that we have every drop of vaccine that can be made available to Wales, available to Wales, and that that will be done fairly. How many doses of the two vaccines has Wales actually received so far? Does the Welsh Government know that number? Yes, we do know that number. I have the figure for the Oxford vaccine in my head. I don't have the figure for the Pfizer vaccine accurately enough to give it to you this afternoon. We have 22,000 doses of the Oxford vaccine available to us in Wales, as from Monday of this week. We expect that to go up marginally to 25,000 doses next week and to go up to 80,000 doses in the week after that. We took some significant deliveries of the Pfizer vaccine on the 23rd and the 27th of December, which means that we have at the moment more doses of the Pfizer vaccine available to us than we do of the Oxford vaccine, and certainly we know how many doses we have. We need to know that beyond three weeks, because in order to be able to plan for the maximum delivery of vaccination, you need to have a reliable sense of just how many doses you're going to be able to have available so that we can maximise the opportunities we have through our primary care colleagues and others to deliver them. But that plan is being worked on absolutely every day at the UK level. My colleague von Gethin was in a meeting with all the other health ministers across the UK just yesterday, and I am confident that we will have confirmation of that volume as it becomes known and that we will get our fair share of it. Andy, thank you to Adam Hale of PA. Diolch yn rhan o'r prif Weinidog. It's just been announced that a third coronavirus vaccine by Moderna has been approved for use in the UK, which the UK has ordered seven million doses of, although it won't be available until the spring. Can I get your reaction to that and what it means for Wales? Does this brighten the outlook for the near future and does this mean that we'll return to normal life even sooner? Well, every new vaccine that gets approved is a step forward for us here in Wales, and it's good news that the Moderna vaccine has now been approved for use in the United Kingdom. Every new source of supply we have increases the resilience of the system, because we are all dependent upon manufacturers being able to turn out very high volumes of the vaccines, not just for us here in Wales and not just for us here in the United Kingdom, but for demand that they will be for that vaccine across the world. The more sources of supply you have, the less vulnerable the system is to individual glitches in production lines and so on. So, it is good news, and when those supplies become available later in the spring, we will certainly be using them here in Wales. Does it bring forward the day when we are able to put coronavirus behind us? Well, that depends, as you heard in my answers to Andy Dades, on the speed at which those supplies become available, against the speed at which the new variant of coronavirus is spreading. So, it is certainly good news, as with all vaccines, it's not a magic wand. The struggle to deal with coronavirus and to put it behind us is one we're all going to have to go on being involved in for weeks and for months ahead. It's common sense, isn't it, that if Wales continues to lag behind the rest of the UK every week or every day, however, it's measured for the seable future in terms of the vaccine roll-outs, then the overall gap will widen, won't it? So, do you accept that Wales can't afford to continue to slump to last place? Because despite this morning interviews that we aren't in a sprint, we are in a sprint, aren't we, to get as many people vaccinated as possible? Well, first of all, let me just take on directly the sort of taken for granted theme that somehow Wales is lagging behind. We are talking about fractions of one decimal point here. It is not the case that Wales is somehow far adrift from the rest of the United Kingdom. We are all in a bunch. When I answered questions here before Christmas, I was being asked why it is that Wales had the worst rates of coronavirus in the United Kingdom, as though that was somehow inevitable. Today, that is not the case. Both England and Northern Ireland have worse rates of coronavirus than we do. Just as in testing and in PPE, there were questions in the early days. We are still in the early days of vaccination. And it isn't a sprint. We are going to be vaccinating people for months ahead. Now, the quicker we can do it, the more people who get it, the safety of the vaccine, all of those things are really important. We have plans in place next week in Wales to move from the 75 GP practices who will be vaccinating on Monday to 100 by the end of next week, 250 by the end of January. We have 14 vaccinators from the army working in Wales already. We have 70 other army personnel helping us with the vaccination programme. We have 14 mobile units already on the ground and working in Wales delivering vaccination in our care homes. The pace of that will gather momentum over the weeks ahead as our very committed colleagues in the NHS do everything they can to bring vaccination to as many people here in Wales. I think a bit of support for them in the efforts that they are making, given the stress and strain that they are under in the NHS in Wales today, would not come am miss. Adam Diolch yn fawr over to Will Haywood at Wales Online. Thank you, First Minister. We have been asking for concrete information around a huge range of issues to do with vaccines, including maximum capacity when vaccine centres are going to open where they are, whether they will open weekends and what the capacity is. We found it really hard to get an answer with many health boards just directing us back to the Welsh Government. This is very different to Scotland who have published a huge amount of information around this already, including a very detailed plan. Was there no detailed plan in place? If there was, why haven't you trusted the people of Wales with it until now? We will publish our plan at the beginning of next week. The Health Minister will do that. You are right, Will. The Welsh Government is being asked by many journalists and many others for all sorts of details about the vaccination programme. I have not been willing to divert people from the job of getting that programme in place and up and running to be answering questions about it. We will publish more information next week. We will publish the daily rate of vaccinations carried out. At this point in the system, it is more important to me that people are spending their time making sure that people are being vaccinated than having to divert them from that job to answer a lot of questions about what we are doing, where we are doing it, how long we are taking to do it, where people will be being vaccinated in the future and many, many other questions that come in every day. We will come to those questions and we will answer them. But my priority today is for the people at the front line to be doing the job and to be getting the vaccination going rather than being diverted to answering questions about it. With all due respect, First Minister, people are asking these questions because we have known these vaccines were coming since the autumn and I am wondering why these plans haven't been in the public domain for months. I will ask you if I can on targets. I do appreciate it. It is very hard for you to give detailed targets on a vaccine rollout when you are not responsible for securing the supply. However, if there is no idea on time scales or capacity, it makes it hard for people in Wales to hold the Welsh Government to account if they are doing a good job. So, could I just ask you some of the following details on capacity? What is the capacity in Wales for the maximum number of vaccinations that can be done in a day providing there is infinite supply? What do you expect this capacity to be by the end of January and what do you expect this capacity to be by the end of March? Thank you. Well, that's a completely impossible set of questions because we don't have infinite supply. So, what would possibly be the sense of organising for a supply that you haven't got, of having what could be potentially thousands of people standing there doing nothing because they don't have the supply to deliver? So, I am very keen that we publish our plan next week, that we explain as much as possible to people in Wales about how the system in Wales will operate, how it will be built up. But setting targets when you do not know how much supply you have beyond a fortnight ahead, and that is the position at the moment, simply does not make sense. Everybody is working incredibly hard across the whole of the United Kingdom to secure the supply that we need, to get it to the places where it will be used, and then to have people in place to deploy it. As the system beds in, we will have more certainty and we will be able to answer more of those questions. But trying to offer you an answer to a question on the basis that simply doesn't exist, because we do not have infinite supply and we don't even know how much supply we will have three weeks from today, that simply would not be a sensible basis on which to plan for the sort of future that we want to have for vaccination in Wales. But when you have 75 vaccination centres, you must know how many vaccines they would be able to administer. We have 22 vaccination centres in Wales today and we will increase that to 35 as we bring on primary care as well, and of course all of that is being built up in line with the supply. It would not be sensible to open 135 vaccination centres when you've only got enough supply for 35 of them, and that is the point that I'm trying to make to you. We build up our capacity to deliver as the supply of vaccine increases as well. Enormous amount of hard work is going on to increase the supply, but the certainty of it is only a couple of weeks ahead at the moment, and that's the context in which we have to plan as the supply becomes more settled, so our plans to maximise the use of that supply will be settled as well, and we will let people in Wales know everything that we know about it, starting with a publication of the plan next week. Thank you. Thank you. Well over to Rupert Evelin of ITN. Thank you, First Minister. Your answers to questions about why Wales is behind the curve on vaccines could perhaps be summarised as not answering them by simply looking at what is coming down the line, i.e. next week and the following weeks. Can you explain quite clearly how you've got to the position so far? It seems to be what you're suggesting a supply issue. Why is Wales currently right now in last place? We are in broadly the same place as other parts of the United Kingdom, and I'm not going to allow people to exaggerate the gap between where we are and other parts of the United Kingdom as though that were the most important thing to let people in Wales know about today. We are in the position we are in because we are building up our ability to deliver the vaccine, because we are in the very earliest days of vaccination. The Oxford vaccine has been available for less than five days here in Wales. We have a very committed and purposeful plan to make sure that we make the maximum use of every drop of vaccination supply that comes to us here in Wales. We are building it up already. We will build it up further next week. Thousands of people are being vaccinated in Wales today, and that is the story. That is the real story that people in Wales need to know about. The determination, the commitment of the NHS here in Wales to use every bit of vaccine that we have, that the plans are in place to do that, and that we will build things up from these first weeks to make sure that we maximise our ability to deliver this very important programme to people in Wales. Is the Welsh Health Service able to deliver vaccinations at the same rate as other nations in the UK? There is no reason at all why the Welsh NHS cannot do that. The Welsh NHS delivered 1,100,000 flu vaccinations in three months at the end of last year, so the Welsh NHS is absolutely used to mass vaccination programmes. It is certainly true that the Welsh NHS as other NHS in the UK is under enormous strain because of the number of people who have fallen so ill with coronavirus and continue to do so that they need hospital treatment. But despite those strains, despite the fact that we have 2,000 fewer people working in the NHS in December than we did in September because of people falling ill themselves with coronavirus or having to self-isolate because they've been in contact with it, our staff go on being hugely committed to everything they do, including a roll-out of the vaccine on the same scale and at the same pace as you would see anywhere else in the UK. Rupert, thank you over to Dan Bevan at LBC. Thank you, First Minister. Good afternoon. When you were on the James of Brian programme on LBC earlier today, you said there are more measures that could be brought in if the rate of coronavirus begins to rise again. In that answer, you cited curfews in other parts of the UK. If a curfew isn't something that you're currently considering, is it an option for the future? I think James asked me in that interview what things were being done elsewhere that we weren't doing. I explained to him that, at the moment, the actions that we took before Christmas and we were the first part of the United Kingdom to recognise that a full lockdown would be necessary, that the impact of that has been that whereas numbers before Christmas were in the high 600s per 100,000 in Wales, today they are at the below 450. So, while the measures we are taking are succeeding, I don't expect to move to a higher level than we are today. If that position were to reverse, if the new strain of coronavirus were to take hold in a way that drove those numbers up again, then of course we would have to look to see what else might be necessary. We allow, for example, click and collect services still to operate here in Wales, in other countries where they face higher levels than we have. They don't allow services of that sort. So, we haven't exhausted the repertoire, but at the moment, while the measures we have taken appear to be succeeding, then I don't expect to have to go beyond what I've announced today. What would be the next threshold to bring in more coronavirus restrictions? Would you call it an alert level five, or would it remain alert level four, but you'd just bring in more restrictions? If I could press you again on this question, First Minister, are you ruling out bringing in a curfew if coronavirus cases get out of hand again? Well, there are no plans to bring in a curfew in Wales, or I would have announced it today, Dan. You are asking me about how we would respond if the current level of restrictions were not successful in suppressing the virus, and all I can say is that we haven't exhausted the measures that we could take. What we've done today is to strengthen the level four measures by the things that I've said in relation to working with supermarkets, working with trade unions and employers about protections in the workplace. So, we are able to strengthen our current level of restrictions to make them more effective. My hope is that by doing that, and with all the efforts that people across Wales are making, that we will be able to see further progress in suppressing the virus over the weeks ahead, but there are countervailing pressures to that, particularly the spread of the new strain of virus, and what you have to do as government is to remain flexible enough to respond to changing patterns as you see them, and that is certainly what we will be doing in the Welsh Government. Thanks very much, Dan, over to Thomas Evans ar Spedwarrech. Wel, bydw i'n rhaid i bobl ew, a mae'r brechlyn ar gael, mae'r brechlyn wedi mewn trwy o proses i gyd, a ni'n gwybod trwy o'r pwyllgor JCVI a'i siti defnyddio'r brechlyn sydd anu, mae'r prif swyddog meddygol am y angymru yn glir, a mae'r brechlyn ar gael a mae'n pwysig i bobl, pa mae'r cyfle yn dod atyn nhw i dderbyn, a brechlyn i warchod a chi'n an a i helpu i warchod pobol eraill hefyd trwy wneud hynny. So, a peddgorau i bobl ew, a i defnyddio'r wybodaeth, o'r bobl ac o'r asanthaithiau sy'n gwybod am be maen nhw'n ddweud, a debynni ar y wybodaeth sy'n dod mas o'r gwasanaeth iechyd gennyd leithol i dysgu oedd i wrth beth mae bobl fel y prif swyddog meddygol am ddweud ac i debynni ar wybodaeth sy'n dod gyda'r acrifder o'r dod o bobl sy'n gwybod be maen nhw'n ddweud a be maen nhw'n neud. Dwi wedi bach o cyfriferau o mutiwch ar hynny i ddweud o hynny maen nhw'n diodel am bydd y sgrun oedd edrych ac mae'n falch i bydd eich sgrun o'r ffaith i'w ffaith, a wedi byw, ond mae'r ffaith o'r blaid o gyfniriaeth mewn gwiriaf, o'r meddaraeth, o'r rhannu cyffredinol sydd y maen nhw'n tunig o'r ffaith, the expert committee that advises us on the deployment of the vaccine. It comes with afull endorsement of the chief medical officers of the United Kingdom. My advice to people who are anxious about the vaccine is that they should rely on trusted sources. Relyon the word of people who know what they are talking about and who have the credentials to make their views and their advice authoritative, and that means relying on the advice you get directly from the NHS, from the chief medical officer, from those committees that have that expertise, in that way you will get proper and authoritative information that is to be relied upon. Diolch am hynny. Yn mynd y dipyn o bobl wedi bod allan yn mynd y dda yn ystod yr hynny'n ystwyth â gyda twyd geiafol a mwy ddwyd geiafol i ddwod hefyd. Felly mae'n amlwg me'n arall bobl sydd ydym yn gwrando ar heol i aros adref. Byth eich negu'ch chi'r bobl yma ac oes na, fysyre'r effeithach gellwch chi ystyried o ran dweud yr bobl i aros adref y peidiot mynd allan i i fynyddo? Wel, wrth gwrs, yn neges euw mae'r gyfraith am y anhymru angen orfodol i bobl i aros adref a hefyd cael esges dydyn ar eoliadau i taethio mas o'r tŷ a mynd amdro anny'n mynd y ddwyth a'n ystod y geiaf, dydyn hwnna ddim yn esges rysa moll o gwbl. Mae mwy ni yn gallu neud a mae'r awdurdodau yn yr aru a mynd i cael caepach, so bydd dim lle i bobl i pargyo i mynd amdro, ac mae'r heddlu fel wedais i am beth wedais i ddychre mae nhw'n neud fwy i bod yn glir da bobl. Pa mae bobl yn neud es, pa mae bobl yn ni'n neud cymgymeriad, mae'r heddlu yn esbonio ar y yliadau a mae bobl yn rysymol mae nhw'n troi yn ôl. Pa mae bobl yn penderfynol a i torri'r gyfraith? Wel, mae'r heddli yn mynd i wneud fwy na just roi wybodaeth a gyngor i ddyn nhw a roi os i ffigurau o'r fix penalty notices mae'r heddli wedi rhoi mas yng Nghymru dros a Bethhefnos dweitha. Rhaid i'n ystod o'i ddyn nhw wedi wedi bod nhw'n amlwg gweithio'r dweithio'r gynharu, reu'n fwrddol i ddwygynt torqueau be ddyn nhw well Sweitha. Roedd yna'r ddysig o newydd oedd y Llyfr yn waith, ond mae'r ddweithodi'n ddwyach a ddechrau'r amlwg ond mae'n edrych i ddyn nhw a chymlud rhaid i ddwyng uniteid. Rydym yn ddyn nhw ddwy gweithio'r gynharu. mae'r llwyddoedd yn gwneud, mae'r llwyddoedd yn Snoed Dunia yw'r cyfnodion fydd yn cyd-nw. Rydyn ni'n fawr o'r bwysig o'r ddweudol i'w ddweudol i'w ddweudol iawn yn y Llywodraeth. Felly, mae'r peth oedd yn gwael ei ffwrdd mewn gwyllt, mae'n gweithio'r peth yn ymddangosu'r ddwyllteidol i'r peth, ac mae'n gwylltio'r peth i'w ddweudol iawn i'r peth. yn dda'n mynd i gyntaf i'w pryd yma yn ymweld i ddweud yn ymweld ac mae eich gảnegiaeth gwlad mewn gwahanol a ddiolch i'n gofod hyn i ddyn nhw. Dwi'n golygu'n gweithio ar maen nhw a chi'n sy'n gweld yr ysgol o ddiwedd yn gweithio fel y cynnau cymdeithasol oddi. i'r cymdeithasol ymlaen. Tomostiach yn fawr, oedd o Mark Hachins ar 5 live? Thank you very much. Can I go back to the issue of school closures? Because someone has messaged me to say, can you ask the Welsh Government why they assume everyone is on the internet? This person says that their daughter has lost her job in a canteen because of the pandemic and as a family they can't afford the internet because they are concentrating on other bills and that their nine-year-old grandson is having to do his homework when he can on his mother's mobile phone data. The mother says it's a heartbreaking and hopeless situation to be in. I mean it's the case isn't it, that every day the pass is where one pupil is learning online and another one isn't, then the attainment gap widens? Well Mark, that is exactly why the Welsh Government's position is is that we would like to have as many children in school as we possibly could and we'd like to get schools back with children having face-to-face learning as fast as we can, but the circumstances we are in and the advice we are getting from our technical advisory group, which we published this morning, demonstrates to us with the current level of community transmission of coronavirus and the spread of the new variant. It is simply not safe enough to have schools open in the way that we would like them to be open for exactly the reasons that you have said and we don't assume for a moment that all families have access to either devices or to the internet. It's why we distributed more than 10,000 devices to children who didn't have them themselves earlier in the year and it's why we have been paying for Wi-Fi access for those families that don't have it otherwise. Now we expect to hear from our local authorities on Monday with the latest estimates of the need for further equipment to be provided to try and make sure that those families who otherwise would not be able to learn online to do the best we can and the most we can to support them. And I've spoken this week to our finance minister Rebecca Evans and we will provide the funding necessary to meet the need for those pieces of equipment and to support those families in having access to the internet so that they can be used. There are those who make the argument one way of ensuring that you could reopen schools is to support moves to have teachers vaccinated as one of the priority groups. Do you in any way support those calls so that they would protect teachers but it would also enable children to learn in school and would protect their future education? Well we are guided as every government in the United Kingdom is by the priority groups established by the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation and I will not be moving away from the advice that that expert committee provides to us because that advice is designed to save the maximum number of lives by vaccinating those people who have the greatest priority for it. Now I did have an opportunity to discuss this with other First Ministers and with senior officials at a UK level earlier this week. If the JCVI advice changes then our practice in Wales will change but while the JCVI's advice is as it is then we will abide by that advice despite the fact that there are many occupational groups teachers, police officers, people who work in our supermarkets and who face the public every day. Many occupational groups are able to make a powerful case as to why they should be moved to the front of the queue. All of that is carefully considered by the JCVI and we then abide by their advice and that's what we will continue to do. Thanks Mark to Tom Magner of Carersworld. Thank you First Minister. We've been contacted by a lady from Bridgend asking about the change in shielding status of her 13 year old daughter with Down syndrome. In the March 2020 lockdown her daughter was classed as clinically vulnerable but it appears this time round she's not been marked as clinically vulnerable yet nothing in her life has changed whether it's one case or often another. So why do you think this downgrading has happened? Is it as some of our more cynical views are suggesting an adjustment of vaccine priorities to match supply so it can then be said that vaccination rollout targets have been necked? There's maybe some other reason, your thought to be welcome. Well it is certainly not explained by any sort of cynical motive. The people who are counted as needing to shield, the conditions that are included on that list change all the time as clinicians learn more about the virus and the effect that it has on people with different conditions. Some conditions have been added to the shielding list, some conditions have been removed from the shielding list. It's certainly not a downgrading, it is a message to people with those conditions that their underlying health condition is not as susceptible to this virus as was initially thought. It's actually good news for them because what it is saying to them is you're not as vulnerable as the original clinical estimate believed. Other people are being moved into the shielding group because their conditions now turn out to need that level of protection in a way that wasn't expected at the beginning. I think that is the only explanation that I know of, that clinicians keep the list of conditions under regular review. As we learn more about the virus some conditions are added, some conditions are subtracted, but it's always and only on the state of knowledge about the vulnerability that that underlying condition causes to that individual. Thank you very much for that. Just a different issue now about communications. Seven months ago, one of our viewers from South Wales said he emailed your government asking about unpaid carers being classed as key workers, received an automated reply saying 14 days to hear back, but nothing's so far. There's another unanswered question which concerns where do the vaccines come for the military helpers who are helping with the vaccine rollout. In light of these, do you feel that your government responds quickly enough to public inquiries? I don't mean legal public inquiries, I mean inquiries from the public because they're often directed as a key issue and a fast response is critical. Maybe the answer lies in helping unpaid carers to have better internet to get online with web chat. Well, as you can imagine, Tom, the number of letters and inquiries that we have had as a Welsh government over the last 10 months has risen exponentially and that's absolutely understandable and I welcome all the inquiries that we get and we try as a Welsh government to respond as quickly and as helpfully as we are able to. Can I promise you that some of those inquiries don't slip between cracks given the thousands and thousands of them that we receive? I'm afraid I can't do that and if there are individuals who haven't had an answer to their question, please don't wait seven months before letting us know about it. If you're told you should get an answer within 14 days and the 14 days is up and you haven't had an answer, please come back to us and we will do our very best to make sure that you get the best answer we can provide and provide it in as timely a way as we are able. Tom, thank you very much. I'll go to Andrew Forgrave at the daily post. Good afternoon, First Minister. You said you're keen to ensure that the supermarket provides greater levels of safety to shoppers. Could you explain a little bit more? How do you propose to control numbers? How will you ensure compliance? Will it mean longer kids for everybody? Well Andrew, I am receiving more correspondence on this issue thinking of Tom's last question. I am receiving more inquiries on this issue at the moment and almost any other one and those inquiries are expressing anxiety on behalf of the public that the visible protections that they could see back in March, April and May of last year don't appear to be there this time despite the fact that in many ways with a more aggressive strain of the virus those protections are needed even more. So what we are talking to the supermarkets about is a more visible set of measures. You will know that back then if you went to a supermarket there was always somebody at the front door. That person was carefully controlling the numbers of people going into the supermarket to make sure that there were no more than a certain number of people in the store at any one time. That sanitising arrangements were very visible at the front door. You were directed to where you would clean a trolley and make sure that it was safe to be used. When you were in the store there were one-way markings very prominently displayed. There would be tannoy announcements regularly reminding people of the way in which they needed to conduct themselves in order to keep safe. When you came to pay for goods at the checkout there was somebody there directing people to the checkout to make sure people weren't queuing next to each other over prolonged periods. There were markings on the floor so people kept at a two-meter distance. Some of that is no longer as apparent to people as it was in the early days of the pandemic. I want to make sure that those visible signs of the protections that are being offered to the public and to shop workers are in place again. We've worked very closely with supermarkets. They've done a remarkably good job on our behalf. We need to make sure that those things that give people confidence that everything is being done to keep them safe are being done in this lockdown as they were back in March and April. Thank you very much First Minister. After the first lockdown it took almost four months for the Welsh Government to release all two of the restrictions. It was a cautious approach that did receive a lot of popular support. This time the situation however is, if anything, worse. Would you expect then to last just as long as time is not longer? Well I think there are some things that are more on our side than were available to us back last year. Here are three things that maybe will mean that things will be easier than they were in 2020. First of all we have a different level of testing and a greater access to rapid result tests as well. The lateral flow devices as they're called. We didn't have any of that back in June and July of last year. We have them now. They will help. We had no vaccines at all back in the summer of last year. We have three vaccines now going to be available and we have an ambitious programme to make sure that they are used as fast as possible. That will help and we didn't have that last year. We are going into the better weather this year whereas we were coming out of it last year. We were heading into the autumn and the winter and this time we will be heading into the spring and the summer. I think we have learnt the strong seasonality of coronavirus. It really doesn't like the summer and it really does like the winter so we will have that on our side as well as we emerge from the current level of restriction. So there are things against us as well and the new strain and the level to which it is contagious is more difficult than things were last year but not everything is more difficult. Some things are on our side and of course we in the Welsh Government as everybody else would wish for life to return more to as it was before coronavirus as quickly as we can safely do that. Andrew, thank you. Over to RobTaylor at grexham.com. Good afternoon. I've been told that agency staff working on wards in North Wales hospitals, some with COVID patients, have been told that they're unlikely to get the vaccine at a similar priority level as their non-agency colleagues. Is it possible to clarify that policy and if all frontline nurses working in hospitals will be eligible for vaccination in the same priority group regardless of employment status? Well that is not a policy of the Welsh Government and I've not heard that otherwise Rob. Policy of the Welsh Government is that all frontline staff, whatever basis they are employed on, that they should be vaccinated as soon as possible because they are frontline staff and in contact with people who are more likely to be communicating coronavirus than would be the case in the general population. So that's not our policy and after the press conference of course I will go away and find out whether what you've been told is the reality or whether it's one of those many urban myths which we know very quickly circulate around coronavirus. Thank you for clarity that came from a member of staff. For the second question, Public Health Wales data published on dsi.com this morning shows that North Wales has had the most doses issued in Wales yesterday by a significant margin and earlier you said you didn't want to divert people to deal with data queries and spend time having to put the information together but that data is obviously already collated and circulated by Public Health Wales. At least can those already created data updates be made public rather than the public having to rely on leaks? Well you are right, Sydney Rob. We are still publishing an enormous amount of data every single day. Loads of it is to be found already on the Public Health Wales website. I do want the efforts of staff in the Welsh Government and staff in the NHS at this stage to be focused on getting the job of vaccination done and all the infrastructure provided as fast as possible and some of the questions we are being asked will have to wait a little while so that we've got everything we need in place to make sure that vaccination is taking place. I've always said to you and it's still my policy that we should put as much information into the public domain as we can. I think the Public Health Wales website continues to provide an enormous amount of data every day and as of Monday next week we will be adding to that by publishing the daily number of people who are getting vaccinated here in Wales. I'm sure that as the system settles into the groove that we will need over the weeks ahead there'll be more information that we can publish again and when we're able to do that that is the policy that we will pursue. Rob, thank you very much indeed to Alan Evans at Llanelli online. Thank you First Minister. I'm not going to press you on why or who is first or last given the massive push by the NHS and the Welsh Government and a decimal point difference as you put it. You did mention supply though what can be done to improve the logistic procedures for people who are in the front line for vaccinations. We heard of one care home and well I won't say where it is but it is one care home which had to struggle to send that two teams of staff for vaccination have to travel a very long distance because there was no refrigerator anywhere near for the first vaccine. When they got to the facility they were told they'd have to wait in the car park for three hours. The staff team didn't return until near midnight. Perhaps this is an isolated case but are you notified of logistic problems like this something as simple as a lack of a refrigerator? Well Alan I imagine it actually wasn't just the lack of a refrigerator it will be because the vaccine that was being used at that time will be the Pfizer vaccine and it has to be stored as you know at a minimum of 70 degrees Celsius below freezing and that is why it has been necessary while only the Pfizer vaccine was available particularly where we were trying to deliver to care homes for that to be done from specific locations rather than being able to be done everywhere. Two bits of information which I think will help though in those circumstances the 14 mobile units that we now are able to deploy which are focusing on care homes as their first priority so there's more capacity to deploy even the Pfizer vaccine more rapidly to care homes but the bigger answer and the answer that will make the biggest difference is that as supplies of the Oxford vaccine ramp up that is much easier to use that genuinely can be stored in a conventional refrigerator and that should certainly mean that they won't be the need for people to travel the distances that have been necessary in some cases very early on when we're trying to use a vaccine that has to be stored in such very unusual and specific circumstances. Business leaders and organisations are still warning that smaller firms may not qualify for help these aren't big companies they're small businesses often sold traders or not for profit businesses. Will the First Minister commission a study your survey perhaps in conjunction with Business Wheels to find out just how many businesses haven't received any money and also looking at carers and a lady from Climatic Contribut to say that she's had no furlough nor SSP for people who can't work more than 16 hours due to health conditions and related issues. She's a key worker left on universal credits with no food box or any support and she's asking whether or not the food boxes could at least be reinstated. Certainly happy to look at that specific case and to see whether there's anything more that can be done to help there. You're right of course that despite the efforts that we have made to fill the gaps in the UK government's help for businesses there are still businesses that haven't qualified for help here in Wales. I know that my colleague Ken Skates and Lee Waters as his deputy minister and of course the member of the Senate for Llanelli look all the time to see whether there are any other opportunities that we could find and any more funding we could find to go on filling those gaps and we do that very much with Business Wales. We are hopeful that we will have some more funding from the UK government as a result of the decisions that have been made about lockdown in England and if that is the case then that will give us a bit more scope to provide help to businesses who so far we've not been able to bring within the different schemes and regimes of assistance that we've tried to develop here so thank you again for raising that point and we will well we pursue it all the time and we will do it alongside Business Wales as you suggest. I think that's it for today so thank you all very much indeed.