 Wel, ydy'r hwoesweid hwn yw'r ganwyr llawdd yng Nghymru. Mae'r ddweud o'r dweud o'r hwoesuf sydd wedi wneud bod yn ogylch i ddweud, i'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r droseron cyffredinolol, ar hyn i gyfnodd cyrraedd beth oedd yr hyn oedd o'r rhan gwrthwyles o'r llyfr yn y Listai Prydau Fe Oed ddaeth. across the local authority, and there is evidence of community transmission. New restrictions came into force last night, and as the law requires, we will review them within the next two weeks. At the same time, we are keeping the situation as it develops in Newport and Merthyr Tiddville under close watch, working with the two local authorities and the public health experts in those areas. Across the whole of Wales, the position remains complex. As you will be able to see from this slide, cases are rising across Wales. A week ago, when I last spoke at this press conference, we had passed the 20 cases per 100,000 people threshold. Today, that rate is almost 15 points higher. Much of this is being driven by the situation in Caerphilly-Burr, Rhondda Cynon Tav and the other hotspot areas, but we are also seeing increases in other parts of Wales. Sometimes those are low in single figures. In others, they are more significant, and some local action has been agreed. The R number in Wales is estimated to be between 0.7 and 1.2, and it's very certain now that it is over one for the whole of Wales. We're testing more than 9,500 people every day, but the speed at which results are being confirmed is hampered by the well-publicised problems with the UK lighthouse lab system. Very sadly, after many days with no deaths at all, Public Health Wales yesterday reported three deaths of people with coronavirus. As ever, our thoughts are with their families and friends. At this grave reminder that we are dealing with a serious and too often deadly virus. Despite that, I've heard some people say that the current rise in coronavirus cases is nothing to worry about. That it's not serious because no one is in hospital and no one has died. But we are back already to 41 people being treated for coronavirus in our hospitals in Wales, and four people are in intensive care. We've learned a lot over the last six months about this virus, including how to treat it. But for everything we have learned, it is still a new disease. It is a disease which is highly infectious and has few effective treatments, and no vaccine as yet has completed the worldwide search for something that would be effective and widely available. We have seen ourselves in both Caerphilly butter and in RCT, how a few cases can quickly escalate in a short period of time into much wider community transmission, and how that happens unless we follow the rules and the measures which are in place to protect us and our loved ones. It's important to remember that this is not a one-way street, that things can get better as well as get worse. Earlier in the summer we were very worried about the situation in Wrexham. I answered many questions about it here in this press conference. There was a large outbreak at a food processing plant and another centered on Wrexham Myla hospital. We were testing large numbers of people in two neighbourhoods in the town. Today, cases of coronavirus in Wrexham are amongst the lowest in Wales. It shows that provided we do the right things and act together, things can improve as well as get worse. Now we stand on the cusp of autumn and winter and we continue to plan and prepare for an increase in coronavirus over the weeks and months ahead. We're using everything we have learnt from the last six months as we plan for the worst, but work for the best. When we do that, we're using expert advice here in Wales. Swansea University has produced modelling. It will be published today, which shows just how serious things could be over this winter. Our ability to make a difference in the weeks and months ahead depends on each and every one of us. Government can advise, government can inform, government can set rules, but only people can act on that advice. Working together as we have seen, we can make a difference. We have done it before and we can do it again. It is each one of us who has to act responsibly and to make the right choices, to follow those small measures which keep us and our loved ones safe. We all need to keep our distance from each other when we are out and about. We need to wash our hands often. We need to work from home wherever we can. We need to wear a face covering in indoor public places. We need to follow any restrictions in place locally. We need to ask ourselves not how many people can I meet, but how few people do I need to meet, because the fewer contacts you have, the safer you will be. Now many people will have turned on their radios this morning to have heard the news that there are new restrictions being imposed in the northwest of England right along our border in north Wales and have heard speculation that the Prime Minister is considering a national two-week lockdown in England. As many people will have known, there have been numerous examples of problems over this week with a UK-wide lighthouse lab testing system. People experiencing problems booking tests sent many hundreds of miles for a test and delays in getting the results. All of these issues need to be discussed at a UK level by the four governments working together. But as far too often in this crisis, that opportunity has not been there. Today once again I repeat my calls to the Prime Minister for proper engagement with the devolved governments of the United Kingdom. In this most difficult week, there has been no meeting offered to First Ministers of any sort. Since the 28th of May, months ago now, there has been just one brief telephone call from the Prime Minister. Now I think that that is simply unacceptable to anyone who believes that we should be facing the coronavirus crisis together. I say again as I said many months ago, we need a regular reliable rhythm of engagement. Even a single meeting once a week would be a start. And I make this argument not because I think we should all do the same things, but because by being around the same table together, each one of us is able to make the best decisions for the nations we represent. There is a vacancy at the heart of the United Kingdom and it needs urgently to be filled so that we can talk together, share information, pool ideas, and demonstrate a determination that the whole of the country can face these challenges together at this difficult time. Diolch yn fawr, happy now to take some questions and starting today with Felicity Evans of BBC Wales. First Minister, thank you very much indeed. Could I just ask you for more detail on your frustration at what you describe as the lack of engagement from UK government? You say you haven't had calls with the Prime Minister, but what about calls with other key ministers at UK government level? Michael Gove, for example, have there been recent communications with him? There was a meeting between First Ministers and Mr Gove on Monday of last week, but that is the last time that that took place. There are meetings every week between ministers with their counterparts. Leslie Griffiths, our Environment Minister, chaired a meeting of Environment Ministers across the United Kingdom earlier this week. But when all those things come together, when the biggest decisions of all have to be made, we need a forum where the First Ministers and the Prime Minister can get together at a point where, as we are hearing, decisions of such significance are in the offing. Thank you, and speaking of big decisions potentially in the offing, we are hearing reports that the UK government is considering a tightening of restrictions England wide in England. I'm wondering if you're contemplating anything similar in Wales, and if I may, on the testing point that you've made, the frustrations there, can you explain why it isn't possible simply to switch the destination to which the Welsh Drive-in testing centres send the test to be processed to the PHW Welsh labs, which have the capacity which it seems the UK Lighthouse labs don't? Thank you, firstly. So, yes, we are hearing that there may be some national measures. We don't know what the word national means quite often when it's used by the UK government. My reading of it is that they mean England in that context, and some of the things they are contemplating. We are already doing on a national basis here in Wales. Our message throughout the crisis has been, for example, that if you can work successfully from home, you should work from home. We've never had a policy of saying to people, get back on the bus and get back to work as the Prime Minister has repeatedly urged in England. Now, if they re-institute a national measure in England that people should work from home, we will already have that in place in Wales. When the position in Wales is so varied, when you have parts of Wales even this week, where the virus is going down not up, and where there are tiny numbers of cases involved, the case for a larger number of genuinely national measures I think is yet to be made. But obviously, we never rule it out when we think about whether we would need to do that. In relation to the testing capacity, we will be redirecting some of the tests that up until now we have sent to lighthouse labs back into the Welsh system, but there were 64,000 tests done in Wales last week. You can only get to that number by using a combination of indigenous Welsh capacity and continuing to use the lighthouse labs as well. We couldn't solve the whole of the problem by shifting it back into the Welsh system, but we will, on a priority basis, by doing that where we think it is most urgently necessary. Thank you for the over to Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you, First Minister. I'll pick up on exactly that point, if I may. Can you update us on the Welsh Government's efforts to increase capacity in testing and a likely timescale for that? Given the problems that you've reported with the UK system, has it been a consideration at all that you might separate from that UK system, particularly from the UK online booking system? Well, Adrian, it is not many weeks ago that I was being urged by voices in Wales to make more use of the UK system. Why were we using the Welsh system when the UK system was clearly more successful and had more capacity? It is only three weeks ago that the lighthouse labs were functioning very well and providing a very good service for Wales. The real answer here is not just to separate ourselves off, but for the efforts which the UK Government says it is making to put the lighthouse labs back on track to be done urgently and to be done successfully so that we can use that system alongside the system we have here in Wales. In the meantime, and over the weeks that that will take, we will increase the number of tests that can be done inside the Welsh system. There will be an additional number of tests available next week. There will be a further additional number of tests the week after that. We will use that extra capacity to redirect some of the testing that we have been sending into the lighthouse lab system to be done here in Wales. It is not like turning on a tap. A lot of hard work goes into mobilising those extra tests, but that hard work is being done. I met with the Health Minister von Gethin and those people who are responsible for the testing regime here in Wales, and they are confident that by doing that hard work there will be more tests next week and a further set of extra tests the week after. Thank you, and if I could go back to the frustrations you were talking about in terms of communication and engagement with the UK Government. Can you say what steps that you as a Government and you as a First Minister have taken to try to make those discussions happen? For instance, Nicola Sturgeon has said today that she has asked for a Cobra meeting to happen over the weekend. Have you taken similar steps? Absolutely. We take them all the time. The Scottish Government had asked for a meeting on Monday of this week to talk about the testing problems. My response was that, of course, we would go to such a meeting, but it ought to be a Cobra meeting, that it ought to be a meeting chaired by the Prime Minister. We have repeated that again today. We have replied to the Scottish notification that they would like a meeting by saying that we support that. We want a Cobra meeting too. I do not think a week goes by without me making the case for more regular, reliable engagement between us. I am not saying it just this week, because things are getting worse. I was saying it all through the period when things were getting better, because I just do not see what we lose by talking to each other. The more we talk, the better we understand and the better decisions we make. That has been my case for week after week, and it is becoming more and more urgent as the difficulties mount. Adrian, thank you. Go to Andy Davies, at Channel 4. First Minister, we were at a new test centre in Abercynan yesterday, which had been advertised by the health board as for residents of Rhondda Cynon Tath only. Of the majority of the 20 or so people I spoke to in the queue there, they had come from England, from Taunton, Bristol, Swindon, Reading, Sirencester, Bambry, Western Supermaire, Gloucester, Bridgewater, Corsham and elsewhere. Under the new travel restrictions in RCT, are people from outside the area, potentially very infectious, still allowed to travel long distances to enter the county borough to get tested? If so, is that a problem in your view or not? I think it is a problem. It is a problem with the portal, the way the Lighthouse Labs are organised, because it does allow people from outside an area to book tests. It is clearly not sensible for people to travel long distances to an area that itself is in lockdown, because the virus is in such circulation. I know I have heard reports myself of people having to wait a long time when they get to Abercynan to have that test. This simply does not make sense for anybody. It does not make sense for the people travelling to that site, and it does not make sense for people who live in that area either. We will be in discussions today again with the Lighthouse Labs to try to iron out this issue. It does not make sense for people to be able to travel to an area that itself is experiencing a form of local lockdown because of coronavirus for tests. But it is not the point that you can disagree with this, but you have very little ability to control it. This is the testing system run by the UK government, which you bought into. Is that the case that, in fact, you have no control over the system that you have bought into? Can I just ask very quickly, is it feasible for England to introduce a possible new national lockdown and for Wales not to follow suit? On the first issue, it is not that we do not have control. We have influence because we are part of the system. I think it makes no sense for anybody to send people into an area that it has got high rates of coronavirus, where local people are having to observe not travelling beyond the borough, and we will make that case powerfully today. Your second point just underlines why I think it is so important for us to have a meeting of First Ministers and the Prime Minister. Together, if England were unilaterally to go into some form of national lockdown, hundreds of people who live in Wales work in England. They would be directly affected. It would be wrong for that decision to be made without an opportunity for the Welsh First Minister to have explored those implications with the Prime Minister and for them to be taken into account. Hundreds of people live in England and work in Wales. Hundreds of people live in Wales and have relatives living in England. It is not possible to make unilateral decisions without being properly informed about the way in which they would have an implication for others. That is why I am repeating my call this morning for a regular series of those meetings. If actions are necessary in any part of the United Kingdom, they are understood and informed by all the component parts of our nation. Andy, thank you. I will go to Sam Cotes at Sky News. First Minister, thank you. It seems this morning three specific ideas are being looked at in Downing Street for England. One is a ban on all social contact indoors. Another might see schools being closed for a two-week-half term rather than one week, and then there is some suggestion we could return to a full national lockdown. How attracted are you to any of those three ideas? We have already moved in Wales to limit social contacts inside the home. Our own version of a rule of six does not allow any six people to come together. They have got to be only people from an extended household. I think we are already well down the road in relation to the first of those measures. You will remember, Sam, that when we were arguing for a four-week return of schools in June and July in Wales, the quid pro quo would have been a two-week-half term in October. We were not able to achieve that everywhere in Wales because there are contractual issues with teacher unions that had to be thought about. But we had already made the case for the advantages of a two-week break in October in order to break any change of transmission that may have built up during the first half term. As to a full national lockdown, I have heard, as all you will have heard, that the Prime Minister absolutely ruled that out. If it is back on the radar in Downing Street, it is certainly not consistent with all the messages we have heard from them over the last week. First Minister, you see the scientific advice from Sage. Is it the case that the scientists advising the whole of the United Kingdom are trying to get a full national lockdown back on the political agenda all over the country? Well, I think what scientists are saying is, first of all, the position across the United Kingdom is not uniform. The position in Ceredigion is quite certainly not the same as the position in Bolton, so a one-size-all fit set of measures may still not be the right answer. But I think scientists are saying that if the virus continues to escalate in the way that it is in some parts of the United Kingdom, some sort of break may be necessary in order to get it back under control again. There are a series of measures which are being discussed as part of such a break agenda. Some of them are things that we have already done in Wales. Some of them are things which we have not yet needed to do in Wales. But I think that is where the debate is, is do we have to contemplate a series of measures that manage to interrupt the rapid rise in this disease in some parts of the country, and would that be necessary on a wider basis? I think that is a sensible discussion to have, although I do not think that it is a decision that would need to be made in Wales today or even next week. Dan Bevan of LBC, please. Thank you, First Minister. Good afternoon. The Welsh Government is still yet to apologise for the public health Wales data breach, despite the fact they answer to yourselves. Will you apologise today for that breach, and why did it take nearly two weeks for the public to be informed about it? Dan, these are the responsibilities of public health Wales. Public health Wales has apologised for the data breach, and dealing with the data breach and notifying the necessary authorities and making it public is a matter for public health Wales, an independent arm of public health here in Wales. They have done everything that they need to do, and I don't think there's anything more to be said about that matter. Thank you, and your colleague, the health minister, claimed in the last press conference that a trip to Doncaster Racecourse caused a cluster of COVID-19 in the Rhondda area. That's since been clarified. The group didn't actually go to the racecourse, nor did they have tickets for the event. In a time where government messaging is very important, how can something so incorrect come from the Welsh government? It's incorrect at all, Dan. Many, many people come to the rugby in Cardiff without having a ticket for the rugby or any intention of going to the match. The fact that people didn't go to the races is really a complete red herring in this argument. What is undoubtedly the case is that a group of people went to Doncaster and many of them came back infected with coronavirus, and in the local contact tracing effort, that has had to be taken into account in explaining and accounting for the rise in numbers of coronavirus cases in the Rhondda Cynon Taf area. Surely that is the issue, not whether people actually went to the races or not. Thanks very much indeed to Anna Lewis at Wales Online. Thank you, First Minister. Recently, clusters in our city have been connected to rugby clubs and social clubs. Has any consideration been given to Wales-wide measures to reduce the amount of opening hours for venues and bars and to restrict the conception of alcohol to meals or other measures to reduce the link of clusters in such venues? Yes, all those measures have been considered in Wales. If you look at our local lockdown plan, we set out a menu of measures that could be used to deal with any local rise in coronavirus cases, and those measures, restricting opening hours, restricting the sale of alcohol, for example, all of those are there on that menu. The important point I think to make is this, is that the cause of spikes in any one area can be very different. I referred in my opening statement to the position in Brexit, where we knew that the cause could be linked to an outbreak in a workplace and an outbreak in a hospital. The range of measures you would draw from the menu are very different in those circumstances than the range of measures you need when the virus is spreading more widely in the community or can be traced to other causes. So the list is important, but it is choosing the right things from the list to respond to the local circumstances that is more important still. Thank you for that. Following on, the Merthyr council leader Kevin O'Neill today said that he did not agree with the idea of a geographic lockdown to stop families from visiting each other in their homes due to a lower local transmission rate. He also indicated that such draconian measures would not have the effect that he wanted to change attitudes in the area. I was just wondering what your response to such comments were and what the chances are of a geographical lockdown in the Merthyr borough? Well, those measures are not in place in Merthyr, so the leader of the council no doubt responding to some hypothetical question is responding to a position that doesn't exist. Those restrictions are not in place in Merthyr, and they haven't been felt to be necessary in Merthyr by the local team that is responsible for giving us advice on the public health situation there. In recent days, the position in Merthyr has been improving. Now it's marginal and incremental, and I'm not wanting to suggest that anything major should be read off a few days of improvement. But provided that improvement can be sustained, and we can persuade people in Merthyr, as the leader of the council has said, to observe all the things that they need to observe to help with that situation, the need for any further measures in that borough may yet be avoided. Anna, thank you. We'll go to Claire Hayhurst at PA. Thank you, First Minister. First Minister, can I go back to schools and just ask how many schools in the moment are affected by coronavirus, and has your government seen evidence of pupil-to-pupil transmission, particularly I'm thinking in primary schools? Claire, thank you. I was visiting a school in Cardiff myself earlier this morning to see the measures that they have put in place groupulous measures to make sure that staff and pupils at that school are kept safe. The latest figures that I have in relation to schools are that over 80% of pupils are currently attending schools across Wales. It was 93% in the school that I visited this morning. The latest figures we have are that a total of 66 pupils and 63 members of staff have received a positive result, and that represents 99 schools and colleges across Wales. But all those cases so far are cases where the person has contracted the virus outside the school, not inside the school. So, these are people who for a variety of reasons have come across the virus, but intra-school transmission. It's early days, schools have only been back three weeks, but we don't have evidence of that in Wales so far. Of those cases, by far the majority of schools have only one case, one student or one member of staff. In the hotspots in south east Wales, that's different, but across the rest of Wales, even when there are cases, they are isolated and not just in single figures, but a single figure of one. Thank you, First Minister. Can I go back now to the Lighthouse labs? Have you received an explanation from the pay government other than an increase in demand for the problems that are being experienced with the labs and the testing regime? Well, I think the two main explanations that we have seen are, first of all, and mostly that demand escalated beyond what had been predicted and was in any of the models. I think I said that we had 64,000 tests done in Wales last week, that was nearly 20,000 more than the week before. So demand has escalated very sharply in Wales as well, but I think the other issue that we are learning about is that staffing in the Lighthouse labs had relied over a summer period on students and postgraduate staff at universities who are now returning to their normal occupations and that there's been a challenge in filling those places. So it's a mixture of extra demand and some staffing challenges. Clare, thank you. I'll go to Mark Hutchins at Five Live. Thank you very much, First Minister. Can I return to that broadside you issued against the UK government? You seem to be putting it pretty much at the door of number 10 and specifically the Prime Minister. Of course, people will say that the M4 is a two-way street. So have you rung him up and asked for a meeting that's been refused? And if so, what reason is being given? Well, Mark, as I said in answer to an earlier question, we absolutely regularly throughout this have asked for that regular reliable pattern of engagement with the UK government. Only the start of this week, I was once again urging the calling of a Cobra meeting chaired by the Prime Minister. So I don't think there could be any ambiguity at all at the UK government about the Welsh government's position, which throughout this has been that we need better, more reliable, not ad hoc, not meetings called a short notice, but a pattern of engagement in which the four nations and the four First Ministers and Prime Minister have an opportunity to get together. We've made that case absolutely consistently over the months, and I don't think there could be any doubt at all in Downing Street of our wish for that to happen. And if I can turn to a more local story, are you concerned by comments from the manager of Connor's Key No Man's Football club last night that he had to, quote, turn a blind eye when three players reported for a match feeling unwell with headaches and stomach upset? Now, the club and he have stressed they followed all the regulations, did everything by the book, but given that three other players had previously tested positive, does this need further investigation? Well, I think it probably does. So we've been in contact with the FAW this morning. They are going to investigate. They're going to establish the facts. I've seen the additional statement put out by Connor's Key today, correcting, as they would see it, an impression that was given overnight. But nevertheless, I think it's important that the facts are established. I've been dealing this week with requests from other football clubs in Wales for us to allow a return of fans to matches. I'm sympathetic to that if it can be done in the right way. But if it's going to be done, it's got to be done on the basis that the authorities that are responsible for the running of sports clubs in Wales who give undertakings that we can all have confidence that those undertakings will be honoured. Mark, thank you to Steve Bagnell of The Daily Post. Thank you, First Minister. With local lockdown measures now set to come to force in nearby areas including Merseyside and Warrington, which are located close to the border, will it be the case people from these areas will still be able to visit or holiday in north Wales or the rest of Wales, or will there be restrictions on them coming? Well, Steve, thank you. It's a point that I tried to make in my opening statement that some of the areas where changes are being made in England are right along our border, and they have an impact on us in Wales, which is why we are entitled to have an opportunity to discuss them and to make sure we've understood that. So, I've had no opportunity to discuss with any English Minister whether or not they intend to impose any travel restrictions as part of the package of measures that they are introducing. If they are not, then there would be no restriction on people continuing to come to Wales for holiday purposes. Can I just take a moment just to express my own thanks to both local communities and to the tourism industry for the way they have worked so hard over the holiday period to allow visitors to come to Wales and for that to be a safe experience? We don't have evidence in Wales, as yet at least, that transmission has occurred as a result of those visitors coming, and that will be because of the enormous efforts made locally and the responsible way in which almost all visitors who come to Wales have acted in helping us to keep them and the rest of Wales safe. Thank you, First Minister. With discussions over national lockdowns and to give some context, in terms of the rise in figures, where are we in Wales compared to when the first national lockdowns implemented here? Are we close or is it a long way off? We are, I think, in the position we were in in the early part of February. So, we are not where we were when the lockdown itself was imposed later on in March. We are a number of weeks behind that if you take Wales as a whole. But what we have learnt and what we are learning again in the south-east corner of Wales is that this is a virus that can go from being in very low circulation to very high circulation very quickly indeed. So, although we are not in the position we were back in March, I don't think we should take any false comfort from that. If we don't do the right things, we could be back there very quickly. Steve, thank you to Rob Taylor of rexham.com. My name, First Minister. In response to a question in early August about what was being done to tackle the outbreak at Rexham Hospital, you mentioned that all staff would be tested, and the latest figures that were being given are still over 20% of staff not tested. This morning the outbreak was declared closed. Was your comments for all staff testing inaccurate, and if there are similar outbreaks, will staff testing be done quicker? Rob, I don't have those figures in front of me, and of course there may be staff who didn't need to be tested. For example, they weren't working at the hospital during the relevant period. They may be on the staff of the hospital, but they may have been working somewhere else in the health board. They may be on leave. They may be on study elsewhere. It may not be the case that every single member of staff needed to be tested, but I'll take a look at the figures and make sure that for myself. If they were to be a further outbreak, and it was necessary to test staff, then of course that is what we would expect to happen. Thank you. You've previously referred to the TTP response in Wrexham, and self-isolation by targeting specific people who worked at a factory as a smart lockdown. As we're seeing increasing capacity issues in the testing system due to increasing cases, are you confident that the capacity of the tracing teams to deal with similar increase in demand is there, and can tracing resources be increased if required? So the number of people in our TTP teams is up to around 700 now. In the early days, as you know, we were using members of staff who were employed by local authorities, for example, who weren't needed for their routine duties because of the nature of the lockdown. Over the weeks the TTP has been in place, many of those people have gone back to their original duties. So the 700 people we have now are not the same people we had in the beginning, and those people who've gone back to their normal duties now create a reserve of people that we can draw on rapidly if they are needed because numbers go up, because those are people who've used the system and are familiar with it, and we have a capacity altogether to have about 1800 people working in our TTP system if it is needed. So it's an important question because you do need the ability rapidly to increase the number of TTP staff if you are dealing with a whole range of spikes across Wales. So far, our TTP system has stood up very well. I'm really grateful to the people who work in it. I know just how hard, for example, teams in south east Wales have been working over weekends, long hours chasing people who can't be found during the day and so on, and it is their efforts that have allowed us to get on top of many of these local spikes, and we need to make sure that we are able to support them in that and to augment that number should that need be required. Rob, thank you to Dan Barnes of the South Wales Argus. Thank you very much. Can I just ask, last week you said that over the next couple of weeks there would likely see a rise in the need for critical care beds and also a rise in the number of deaths. Our area of Guant had its first death in more than two months yesterday, so do you think that this will continue to rise as we head into autumn? Dan, thank you. What I wanted to do, I'll do it again, is just to explain to everyone the way that the disease develops. So, we've got very few deaths at the moment. I'm very sad to hear of the first one in an Iron Bevan in such a while, and not many people in critical care beds. But when you've got more people in the community, that's the first stage, some of those people will become ill to the extent that they need hospitalisation. Some of those will need critical care capacity, and sadly, as we have seen, some people end up dying from coronavirus. So, the fact that we've got more people ill in the community will inevitably lead to more people reaching the further ends of the system. That takes a number of weeks, but we are already seeing. I see that the medical director in Cwm Tav Morgannog today has said that they are already seeing a small additional number of people being presented at hospital as a result of the extra community transmission they are seeing there. So, these are early straws in the wind, but we know from the way we saw things happen earlier in the year that this is the very likely pattern. Thanks very much. Going back to schools for a minute, in Gwent 43 schools now have people self-isolating due to coronavirus cases with more being reported every day. Is there a point that you make the decision to close the schools? Well, I don't think that we are at that point as far as a national decision is concerned. As I've said here before, from the Welsh Government's point of view, schools are a top priority for us, and keeping them open wherever we can and safely do so is a priority. We are working very hard with our local education authorities who are facing some significant challenges in some parts of south-east Wales to support them in keeping as many young people and staff safely in schools as we can. I think that that effort is succeeding, and we will invest in that rather than in thinking that a national global end to schooling would be the right answer in any county borough. Over to Nathan Schusmith at the speaker. Thank you, First Minister. As part of some of the localised restrictions in Wales, licence premises have to close at 11pm. What evidence have you got to suggest that closing licence premises at 11pm will help to stop the virus? How much do you expect that to help? Is there a particular reason why 11pm has been chosen when it is earlier in other parts of the UK? Well, it is a contribution to the wider measures we are taking in those local areas to prevent the continued spread of the virus. The evidence has been that there are a small number of people who, when one pub closed, would then move on to find another pub that was still open. When that pub closed, they would move on to find a third licence premises that were still open. By the time they had got to the third one, their ability to recall where they had been, what they had done and who they had been with was undoubtedly compromised. So, when contact tracing people needed to speak to them, there was a limit to the information that could be obtained from them. Even a small number of people who become symptomatic, who have been moving from one place to another, can have the effect of spreading that disease over quite a large area. That was the case that laid behind the decision to implement a unified closing time across the borough in RCT. We took advice from the local authority and the local licensing authority as to the time of night that it was most proportionate to impose that uniform closure. The advice we had from them was that 11 o'clock was a sensible response to the pattern of behaviour that they were observing on the ground. Thank you for explaining that. You mentioned about the continued lack of engagement from the UK government. How often are you able to meet with other First Ministers or talk to other First Ministers in these times? If the UK government continues to not respond to calls for them to engage with you, what are your plans to do then? Can you discuss with the other First Ministers just without the UK government? Would that help at all? It does help. I very regularly, far more regularly, have contact with the First Ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland and with some other leaders of big metropolitan areas in, for example, the mayor of London. It is always useful and you always learn something and it always helps you to think of ways in which we can respond to the virus here in Wales. That is why I am not contemplating a UK government that would not be willing to talk to other parts of the UK. What is there to lose by talking? I think the case is so evidently sensible that we can expect that we will have a different level of engagement from the UK government given the difficulties which are being experienced in all parts of the United Kingdom, but which are particularly serious in some parts beyond Wales. Nathan, thank you. Finally, today over to Andrew Nuttall at the leader. Thank you, Minister. The future of skating rinks has been a constant concern of our readers as we get updates of the Welsh government through our lockdown. Many people have expressed concerns at these facilities, facilities like swimming pools and gyms have reopened. Our skating rinks in Wales have kept their doors closed for almost six months now throughout the lockdown. Adding to this frustration, facilities in England and, likewise, Scotland have opened in recent weeks and months. On the Welsh Government's website, a date is listed for October 3 for these facilities to potentially reopen should the conditions allow it. Is there a realistic possibility that this will be the case now due to the spikes in small areas of Wales? And if so, when will the ministers be giving these businesses a revised date? Andrew, thank you. There are only two permanent ice rinks in Wales. The one in Cardiff will, I think, reopen on the 3 October, provided the position in Cardiff remains as stable as it is today. The other permanent ice rink is in D-site, that is currently used as a field hospital site. We may well need to retain it for that purpose as we go into the autumn. Thank you, and that leads me on nicely. I was going to ask about the field hospitals here in North Wales. We have three that you've mentioned in D-side, and we also have them in Banger and now, if I believe it's right. As we enter the autumn and the winter pressures, do you believe that these hospitals will see action, essentially, as a lot of people have said in recent weeks and months that the hospitals have been fairly quiet on this end in North Wales particularly? Well, I think there's no doubt that we think that we need to retain field hospital capacity into the autumn and winter. We're reviewing the capacity, though. Our experience of earlier in the year leads us to suggest that we may not need all the capacity that was created earlier because clinicians have learnt a lot about how to treat the disease successfully, particularly in earlier stages. But field hospitals remain a really important safety net in our system so that our hospitals can continue to treat all the other things that people need the NHS to be able to do. We're refining the numbers, we're refining the plan for field hospitals as well, but they will remain a feature of our response to coronavirus in all parts of Wales as we go into the rest of the autumn and the winter. Andrew, thank you. Thanks to everybody again today. Diolch yn fawr.