 Rhawn da, Lened mor gandwig wedi dod iach iddag wasanaethau cymdeithasol dros Llywodraeth Cymru a ddiolch i chi am ymuno gyda mi yn weith eto. Thank you very much for joining me again today. I want to give you an update about the latest public health situation in Wales, as we prepare to mark the second anniversary of the pandemic and the first lockdown. Since the end of January, we've seen a steady decline in cases of coronavirus as the winter Omicron wave receded, but we are now, once again, seeing a marked increase in cases across Wales. Coronavirus is spreading quickly in all parts of Wales and in all age groups. Mae'r coronavirus yn sledd yn gyflym ymhobr anogymru ac ymhobr grwp oedran. When the Economy Minister held a press conference to update you about the outcome of the last three-week review, there were around 160 cases per 100,000 people based on positive PCR tests. Today, that figure has more than doubled. This rise is being driven by the BA2 subtype of the Omicron variant of coronavirus. This is a slightly different form of the virus than the one which caused a huge wave of cases over the Christmas and New Year period. All the signs show that it's even more transmissible and faster moving than the original Omicron variant, and reinfraction rates are high, so even if you've had COVID before, unfortunately it won't mean that you're immune to BA2. We had expected to see a rise in case rates as we gradually release protections, but the BA2 subtype is pushing infections up rapidly. I'm going to show you a couple of slides which show how cases are rising all over the UK, driven by this new subtype. The first slides are familiar one. It shows the latest results of the ONS coronavirus infection survey across the UK. You can clearly see that the levels of infections have been rising in all four countries. The rise in Northern Ireland, which is shown by the yellow line, started much earlier, and is now showing some signs of levelling off. You can see case rates growing in Wales. The latest results suggest one in every 25 people is infected. This second slide is different from anything we've shown before. There are four graphs on the slide, one for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Each shows a line for the original Omicron variants and one for the new BA2 subtype. You can see the original Omicron variant declining, and the new BA2 subtype taking over as the dominant form of the virus. The moment this happens is when two lines cross. This happened much earlier in Northern Ireland, shown at the top right. In Wales, the bottom right, the lines crossed over at the start of March. It's likely that most new cases of COVID-19 are now caused by BA2 in Wales. We believe the clinical severity of the BA2 subtype is similar to the original variant of Omicron, which thankfully for most people will mean that they will experience mild symptoms if they've been vaccinated. But this doesn't mean that everyone will have a mild illness. We're watching the levels of illness in older people very carefully, and there has been a spike in hospital admissions in all age groups over the last couple of weeks. There are currently more than 1,200 COVID-19 patients in hospital beds at the moment. This is the highest level we've seen since last March, and it's set to rise even further. Fortunately, there are low numbers of people in intensive care with COVID-19 at the moment. The number of NHS staff who are absent because they have COVID-19 or are self-isolating is also rising. Now all of this means pandemic pressure on our health services are once again increasing just at the point when we'd hope to be able to reset and begin a real focus on addressing waiting times. The current surge in cases is being driven by the new BA2 subtype of the Omicron variant of coronavirus. But we also believe that waning vaccine immunity may be making some groups more vulnerable. For some older people it'll be almost six months since they had their booster vaccine. That's why we started our rollout of the spring booster campaign last week to increase immunity levels in certain age groups. So the spring booster will be offered to everyone over 75 to all older care home residents and to everyone over 12 who is immunosuppressed. Health boards will be sending out invitations to everyone in these groups. Children aged 5 to 11 are also being offered a vaccine. This is designed to increase their immunity against severe COVID-19 and to minimise disruption to their education. I would urge families to discuss the offer and to read up about the vaccine. We're continuing to provide first and second vaccinations and boosters. If you haven't had a COVID-19 vaccine and want one, it's never too late to be vaccinated here in Wales. So we bit unrhyw hwyd i gael eich brachio yma'n hymry. A website and health board websites have more details about how to be vaccinated. Mae gyda ni gyfradau eichel o fath heitys iawn o coronavirus sy'n cilchredeg ar hyn o bryd yn yn cymunedau. Diolch beth i'r rhain fwyfa honno'n bydd hyn yn achos i sallwch ysgafn, ond stim un o honno ni isio bod yn sal. We have high rates of infection in our community at the moment, but thankfully for most of us this will cause only a mild illness, but none of us want to be ill. So it's important that we all take steps to protect ourselves and our loved ones and this means getting vaccinated, washing your hands regularly, self-isolating if you have symptoms, wear a face covering in crowded indoor spaces, meet people outdoors whenever possible, when indoors increase ventilation and let fresh air in. These simple steps will help us to protect us from coronavirus and they'll also help protect us from other common respiratory illnesses. Now tomorrow we'll mark the second anniversary of the first lockdown in the pandemic. It'll be a poignant day as we reflect on the last two years and we remember all of those who've died because of this awful virus. My thoughts are with all the families across Wales who've lost loved ones. Fawr i byddwn ni yn nod i dwyflynedd ers dechrau'r pandemic neu'r cyfnod clol cyntaf. Bydd yn ddyrodd emosio nol iawn i nifer o bobl wrth i ni gofio nôl dros y dwyflynedd wethawf am meddwl am bawb sydd wedi marw o'r virus of nadw hyn. Mae meddyliau i gyda pob un o'r teuluoedd. And my thanks. And also with everyone across Wales who's done so much over the last two years to look after and care for one another. With every day that passes we learn more about coronavirus and we take one more step closer to being able to live safely with this virus. Diolch yn fawr i chi gyd. I'll now take questions from journalists and all my answers will be broadcast live on our social media feeds. So first question from Felicity Evans BBC Wales. Minister, thank you very much indeed. Obviously it's a review week this week. The First Minister has given an interview to BBC Wales where he's told us that the decision over whether or not to allow the remaining COVID legal restrictions to lapse on Monday is turning out to be a challenging decision given the spike in cases that you've just talked us through. I wonder if you can give us a bit more insight into the discussions that are going on and what the options are that are being discussed. Are we talking about perhaps renewing all the existing COVID restrictions or just some of them, for example, face masks? Where are we on all of that, please? What is going to be a very finely balanced judgment in terms of whether we continue with our planned approach to releasing those very final restrictions that we still have in place. And there are no foregone conclusions. We're analysing the data. We're giving ourselves as much time as we can to look at what's happening elsewhere in the United Kingdom to learn from their experiences. We will act in the best interest of the NHS and of the public health in Wales. We have got to consider the pressures on the NHS at the moment. Our hospitals are full already. Any additional new pressure on the NHS is going to lead to more difficulties in terms of access to accident and emergency, the difficulties of getting ambulances to people. All of those things need to be considered as well as the fact that we're likely to see more people who work in our NHS going off sick. So these are difficult judgments. At the same time, of course, we've actually got the lowest rates of COVID within the United Kingdom. But we've always tried to follow the science, follow the data, but this is going to be a finely balanced judgment. It may be that we'll look at keeping some restrictions and forging ahead with the ones that we planned already, but there are no decisions that have been made so far. Thank you. Judging from what you've said there, the pressure on the NHS continues to be one of the main factors in driving the decision-making over whether or not to continue restrictions. We've seen how of that today say that they're under more pressure because of COVID-19 admissions and they're rescheduling some planned care. How bad is the pressure on the NHS at the moment compared to how it was during the worst of those COVID pressures and how optimistic are you that they're in a position to deal with that without having to U-turn on some of the restrictions? We're really anxious to get on with the job of the planned care backlog. There are lots of people across Wales who are waiting in pain, who need to be seen. We want to get on with that job. That is more difficult if our hospitals are full. We know that there are over 1,000 people in our hospitals who are ready for discharge but because of the fragility of our care system, which we hope will be reinforced by the fact that we will be paying the real living wage from April. We'll hopefully see some pressure being taken off there. We already have around 1,400 people in our hospitals with COVID at the moment. Only about 19% of those are actually being treated for COVID so some of them have come in with other issues but they happen to have COVID so we've got to understand that but actually the way we deal with them in hospitals needs to consider the fact that they do have COVID and they could be passing that on to other people so that adds to the pressure. That's why I think it is going to be very, very difficult. I'm acutely aware of the fact that the pressures on our accident emergency services, for example, the ambulance, lots of ambulances waiting outside because they can't get people into hospitals so the more people we see in hospitals with COVID, the more difficult it is going to be to get people in through the front door. Thank you Minister and could I just ask you to summarise that in Welsh as well for me please, thank you. Byddw rwy'n oes hwn yn challenge ar ythrol i'r cabinet wrth ddyn ni geisio penderfynios ydyn ni'n mynd i cariwmlaen gyda'n cynllun i wahanhau i'n cyfyniadau os gwrs mae hwnna'n anod tra bod yn i feroe sy'n dioddau COVID yn ymgyminedd a ni yn codi. Ar y llaw arall, mae un i gyda cyfraddau sy'n is na gweddill a dyna sy'n edrych ond ni'n mynd yn y cyfeiriaid anhywyr felly mae'n botibl bod dwi'n dewys ar ddethol pa gyfyniadau i gadw ond sy'n penderfyniadau wedi cael ei wneud hyd yn un a bod dwi'n cadw llyga da'r data tan dydd iau. Mike Griffiths, ITV Wales. Thank you Minister. If I can just pick up on some of the themes in your previous answers there, notably the support to the NHS to the ambulance service, we know that the Armed Forces, the Army had been asked again to support the service. That was due to end at the end of March. What is the status of that and will you be looking to extend that if possible? There's been a huge recruitment exercise in terms of people joining the ambulance service so we're really pleased to see that happening. But there could be a couple of weeks where there will be some quite difficult situations as we see the numbers of people leaving us who've given us great support from the Army over the winter period but before those new recruits are ready to start their work. So we've been working towards that and we're also working to make sure that we have new and better systems of ambulatory care or the STEC services that we're trying to add to our hospitals so that some people can go to accident and emergency and others go to the same day care services that are available within our hospitals. So we're trying to reinforce that approach so that we don't see difficulties when we see those people who've helped us out so much from the Army over the winter months. In terms of the subtype of Omicron that you've discussed and explained do you have any modelling at the moment that indicates where a possible peak may be and how much further that could escalate? So we did have some modelling but obviously most of that was done on the basis of BA1. That modelling is being updated as we speak so we're hoping to get new models before we make these final decisions but it is absolutely clear that we are likely to see the rates increasing but also the number of people being hospitalised certainly if we look at the experience of Scotland is likely to increase as well. Mark Smith, Wales Online. Thank you very much indeed Minister. Health workers who travel by car to treat people in their own homes say the soaring cost of fuel is limiting the amount of patients they can see each day. Unions have called on NHS employers and the Welsh Government to issue an immediate additional fuel allowance for NHS staff who find themselves out of the pocket. So with that in mind what is the Welsh Government doing to help these workers financially and ensure that patients are given timely care in their communities? I am very aware of the concerns of those NHS workers and the requests that have come from the unions on this very important issue. Of course we don't want people to be out of pocket and we will be assessing this situation to see if there are any measures that we can put in place to support them but we of course need to find that additional funding from somewhere and that is going to be a difficult task but we'll see what we can do in that space. Thank you very much indeed and secondly as you've mentioned last week children between the ages of 5 and 11 started being offered the Covid vaccine in Wales. Would you be able to give perhaps an insight into what the take-up has been like in these very early stages and what are parents telling you about whether they want their children to be immunised against Covid-19 given the chances of their illness is much smaller when compared with adults? Thanks very much. We started the rollout for 5 to 11 year olds on the 12th and 13th of March so it's still very early days to just analyse the uptake in that space. The reason why we were very keen to introduce this because we do recognise that the chances of this aid cohort getting severely ill is very low but we do want to do everything we can to try and keep our children in school because we know how damaging it is for them to miss school and that's particularly true for the autumn so this is very much a preparation for the autumn as well as trying to give them some protection now. We don't know how Covid will run its course and what it would look like in the autumn but if we can put those protection measures in place to keep our children in school we're asking parents to read the information that's available to them. I know that the chief medical officer has written to schools to ask his information to be disseminated to parents as well so we do hope people will take up that offer but obviously that will be a call for parents. Dan Bevan, LBC. Thank you minister, good afternoon. It's fair to say there's a lot of pandemic fatigue around at the moment. On the world people are worried about the cost of living crisis the war in Ukraine. Are you worried at all that if measures need to be reintroduced or prolonged beyond next Monday that it's going to be difficult to ask people to continue with these measures and is that something that's playing into the cabinet discussions at the moment? I absolutely understand that people have had enough of Covid. We've all had enough of Covid particularly when we see the other incredible pressures when we see what's happening in Ukraine but also the real pressures that some of the people within our communities are facing in terms of being able to pay their bills. I do think though that we have to understand that Covid is putting pressure on our NHS. Our job as a government is to protect the public and to protect it in particular in relation to public health. The measures that are left are actually fairly limited so I don't think it's a huge big deal to ask people to wear a face covering in certain circumstances. The ask if it continues will be a fairly modest one so I just think that we need to get some perspective on this relative to where we've been in the past where we simply weren't even allowed to leave our homes. So some perspective I think makes sense. If I could just move briefly away from Covid the Chancellor has an opportunity tomorrow to address that cost of living crisis that you referred to at his spring statement tomorrow. What do you and the rest of the Welsh Government want to hear at the dispatch box tomorrow? We want to hear him make it absolutely clear that there will be more support for people so that they don't have to choose between heating and eating. We know the incredible pressures that are on people. We know that there will be an additional ask for people in terms of their pay packets. They'll have to pay for the national insurance contributions which we don't think is the best way of doing it because it's going to hit certain sectors of society more than others. We saw the cuts to universal credit. Obviously we'd like to see that reversed as well. I think we particularly would like to see some more support in the energy field and we don't want to see them trying to cover up what was a cost of living crisis before with the excuses that all of this has been as a result of the situation in Ukraine. We knew that we were facing a 54% increase in the energy cap in April that was before the Ukraine situation blew up. We know that there's calculated about 280,000 people in Wales living with fuel poverty. We want some support for them. We, of course, in the Welsh Government have done as much as we can. We have a warm homes energy efficiency support scheme. We have a discretionary assistance fund, £14 million if people are struggling. We've got a national benefits take up campaign and of course we gave an additional £51 million in December to help people with their fuel costs. We've given £1.1 million for food banks and of course we've given £244 million in terms of the council tax reduction scheme. So we're doing what we can in Wales but it's the UK Government that has the big bucks and that needs to step in here. Tom Magner, Carers World Life. Thank you very much indeed Minister. Can I draw your attention to an underlying issue that's a very serious concern to our viewers? The latest report into the poor performance of the Social Services Wellbeing Wales Act shows that this situation is denying unpaid carers rights to which they're entitled in law. It was failing even before Covid. Why do you think it has let down unpaid carers so badly over the years, some five years or so, that it's been enforced? Thanks very much. I was interested to read that assessment. Of course Julie Morgan is doing great work in this space and has always been a champion for unpaid carers and if I can suggest to you Tom that she may be making some interesting announcements in the very near future. Perhaps you could look forward to those. Certainly look forward to those but just for the moment can I just get your thoughts on this? A lot of our viewers are saying that the system is far too complicated even if they knew about it. It's a complex mix of local authorities, carers, organisations, health boards. A lot between the Welsh Government providing money and the actual people who need it. Could you simplify the process perhaps or am I anticipating a forthcoming announcement? What I do recognise is that the system is extremely complex. That actually every person who needs care have their own individual needs. So actually to impose a structure on that is really difficult but at the same time we're a government trying to do things at scale. Obviously there's a contradiction there and that's difficult which is why we work very closely with our local authorities to make sure that they have the flexibility to respond at a more local level but hopefully Tom you will be able to wait for further announcement. Impatiently, yes, thank you Minister. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi gyd. Thank you.