 Fy fawr, mae'n gweithio'r ffynol y dyfodol y dyfodol yma ar y dyfodol yng nghyrch yn Wales. Felly, dyfodol y gallwn i'w ddweud o'r ddweud yma o'r dweud o coronavirus yn Wales. Yr ystod yma, mae'n gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Fe wnaeth y maedden nhw'n gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o 100222 o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud, ond y meddwl hynny'n llaw pelosdd o rhan o'r ddweud o'r coronavirus? Yn gyflawn i ysgrifftau ffenasol ac ac oes cyrnydd o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r ddweud sy'n dweud o'r ddweud o'r coronavirus yn ein dweud o'r ddelwedd. Felly, yn fawr, mae gennym ni'n gweithio'r gweithio yn y rhan o gweithio yn y rhan o gweithio yn y rhan o gweithio'r gweithio. Felly, yn y rhan o gweithio arall, Llyfrgellidol yn y cyfnodol ar gyfer 80 ydy'r gweithio. Yn ymgyrch ar y gallwn o'r ddweud, mae'n cyfnodol ar y cyfnodol, a'r cyfnodol ar gyfer y llos o'r cyfnodol. Rwy'n meddwl i'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r coronavirus arall across Wales, yn cyfnod ddaw ar gweithio'r gweithio arall y Gweithio Swyth Wales, yn cyfrifio'r Tidwyr, Rhombol Cynon Taf, Blynyd Gwent, ac yn cyfrifio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio arall y Gweithio North Wales. Y 7-day incendans gweithio'r gweithio'r Gweithio'r 252.8 gweithio ar 100,000 gweithio. Felly ymryd mewn amser o'r gweithio'r sharkerio'r gweithio, fe fyddwn i'n friedd y le dim croedig Seneddis, white soldiers sefyd �mer i a Photowal Sir wenta'r newydd, bod vaimлем werth id簣 yn swyddfaith, a 1112 bwysig 친구 dechreu £100,000. Felly mae'n cyllid hwnnw i destlwlad Rhombol Cynon Taf, bydd ar Tid wrth gwylinch Fyadol,� Senedd Cynon Taf. Yn rhaid gweld chevfer o leidon ar gyfer coronavirus mae'r gweithio'r gweithio ar yr gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithi y gallai gweithio'r cynhyrch yn yr unig. Yn 179.6 cysylltu ddylch yn hytrifio'r 100,000 rhai o'r pethau ar y 60+, a, wrth gwrs, y cyfnod llwyddon hwnnw yn Moethyr Tiddville, Rhombro-Cynwyntaf, ac Yn Blynyd Gwent. Mae'r cyfnod ar 60% yn fwy fydda i'r gweithio ar yr ymgyrch yn gwiswyr deallol ar yr ymgyrch gyfnod Cymru. Yn fwy fydda i gael y cyfryd yn gweithio ar yr hosbrydol. This week the NHS passed the April peak point. On Wednesday there were more covid-related patients in hospital than they were at the peak in April. This includes people with suspected and confirmed coronavirus and people recovering from the virus. The numbers have fallen slightly as a result of discharges a, o fawr, o'r deithas. Rhaid i ddweud yr informacio, mae'r 1,365 o'r rhan yn cyd-diwyd ar gyfer cyfnod llwyddon yn eich cyfnod, yn 169 o'r holl yn gwybod ar y ffrif. Rwy'n dechau i chi'n gwybod i ddweud yr hynny yn ei hwnnw hwnnw ei ffawr. The NHS has capacity to respond to winter and pandemic pressures including using field hospitals but this was a significant milestone to reach. Caring for people with coronavirus will have an impact on both services and our staff. Coronavirus put such a strain on our NHS because people admitted to hospital need to stay for much longer than they would if ydych chi'n deallu'r gwaith. As we look ahead to the next week, I want to start by saying thank you to everyone for everything that you have already done to help keep Wales safe. The fire break will end on Monday, but coronavirus will still be with us. To keep the virus under control, we need to think about our own lives and how we can keep our families safe. We need to stop thinking about the maximum limit of rules and regulations. Coronavirus is a highly infectious virus. It thrives on contact between people. To keep each other safe, we need to reduce the number of people we have contact with and the amount of time we spend with them. There will be a new set of national measures from Monday to follow up your hard work and sacrifices during the fire break. We cannot, though, go back to the way we were living our lives before the fire break and throw away all that hard work. Together we can all play our part and together we will keep Wales safe. As the pandemic goes on, we've learned more about coronavirus. We know that some people will never have symptoms but they can still pass the virus on to others and studies have shown that almost everyone is infectious before symptoms are present. If we want to prevent the spread of the virus, it's important that everyone self-isolates as sooner symptoms appear and that you arrange for a test to be carried out and do not wait for a test result before self-isolating. I know that we're coming into winter and it's getting colder outside but if you can, meet people outside or in a public indoor place where there are measures to protect you, such as cleaning regimes and social distancing and try to leave a gap of a few days between meeting different groups of people if you can. This will help to reduce the risk of spreading the virus widely and quickly and please always remember the golden rules. Keep your distance, wash your hands regularly and please wear a face mask when required to do so. Our new set of national measures will support us all to change the way that we live our lives. The fire break was designed to slow the spread of the virus and prevent our NHS from becoming overwhelmed. It's also given us an opportunity to improve our NHS Wales test trace protect service. We're supporting our successful contact tracing service by creating a national surge team which can be rapidly deployed when the number of people testing positive rise sharply in a particular area. As you know, we're shortly launching the £500 self-isolation payments which will help reduce the financial barriers that too many people face when they're advised to self-isolate and we're piloting new testing technology which we hope will help to reduce turnaround times and speed up contact tracing, find more cases, support population surveillance and most importantly help us to return to a more normal way of life. 2020 has been a long and difficult year for all of us. Every time we have asked you have done everything you can to help bring coronavirus under control and slow it spread. You are keeping Wales safe. I'm tremendously grateful. Thank you very much. I'll take questions from journalists now and as usual we'll broadcast all the answers to questions on our social media channels. Now the first questions today we start with James Williams from BBC Wales. Thank you very much health minister. Given the very very high case rates and positivity rates in Merthyrtydville but also in Fronddogon and Tarf and Lynyd Gwent, are you happy for those areas to come out of lockdown at the start of next week and are you completely ruling out local restrictions now in the coming weeks or are they still in the back pocket if needed if those hotspots in particular aren't dealt with? Well there's two questions really there aren't they James? The first about whether areas are all coming out and whether we're comfortable that areas are coming out on Monday. The answer is yes we were very clear with people when we started the firebreak, when it would start and when it would end and I think a massive breach of trust in extending the firebreak past the period when we said it would end would have much greater consequences for people doing what we all should instead in terms of changing the way we live our lives and the trust people have within government in terms of the advice we're giving and why we're telling people we need to live our lives in a different way and I don't think we could underplay how serious and significant would be if we decided to extend the firebreak on Monday at the very end. And the second point about how comfortable we are is goes back to what we've always said repeatedly. At the end of the firebreak we won't have seen sustained reduction in our headline cases that we think the firebreak will deliver and that's because what we're seeing today in those infection rates being reported is a consequence of what was happening two to three weeks ago. So we are very clear that the lag in the action we take and the direct impact we see we won't see that for the two to three weeks fully once the firebreak has ended. But what gives us some confidence about that is apart from anything else. We'll look at what's happened in other parts of the UK and Northern Ireland in particular who had an even bigger challenge in terms of their population infection rates before their own version of a firebreak and we're starting to see a plateau and a reduction there. That's really important for us. So yes the firebreak will end for all parts of Wales but I just want to really reinforce the point that we can't go back to living our lives the way we did before. We need to change the way we live our lives and this is about people being responsible and thinking not just what the rules provide but think about what should I do to reduce contacts and not to go out and want to have as much contact as possible with other people because that is most likely to lead to more harm and a continued increase in coronavirus circulation. And I guess in terms of your second point about restrictions for the future we've been really clear that we want a national set of rules making it easier for everyone to understand how we should be living our lives and to support that. It is always the case though that if we see sustained localized increases we'll be prepared to take measures that are appropriate. But I think wanting to forecast and to go into giving theoretical promises now about action in one area or another is not appropriate but it does mean we'll need to continue to manage the pressure we see on our services especially the health service and again to reinforce to people please consider what you should do because again if we all play a part then we can help to keep Wales safe. Thank you very much. Can I turn to testing you announced or gave a written statement yesterday updating us on the new generation of rapid tests that you hope will come online in perhaps the next couple of months. But what about the here and now because as you know the the turnaround times in particular for those lighthouse lab tests are still bad they've been bad for a while now so what's being done to deal with the with the testing regime that we've got now for at least the next few months? Okay so there are a couple of things and it is important to run through this so there's regular contact between my officials and the UK government department for health about the programme we haven't sat back and watched what's happened there's been a regular conversation when we've seen challenges in performance and I raised this in a meeting between all four cabinet health ministers last night. So from to the end of September we saw very consistent and high levels of performance in lighthouse labs but we then saw a significant increase and lighthouse labs weren't able to cope. So we went from about 90% of tests being delivered in one day to a really significant drop and that deteriorated at one point to only 24% being turned around in one day and 48% coming back in two days. We have now we are now starting to see an improvement in that testing turnaround it's a 39% performance in one day in the last week of figures that we had and over 90% being turned around in two days and there is now more capacity within the wider lighthouse lab testing programme but it's not at the point where we would say we're entirely satisfied with it so we'll continue to work with colleagues in the department for health in the UK government who have responsibility for the lighthouse lab testing programme whilst we continue to look to deploy our public health Wales tests in a different way supporting our ability to find local outbreaks using mobile testing to do that where we expect to have more control and direction over that here in Wales unequally the investment that I've announced that is coming on board and we should start to see our regional labs that I've announced will move to a 24 hour testing cycle they should be starting over the next week so you can expect to see a continued improvement that's where we need to be it's where all of us in the UK need to be to support the ability to get people to get a test when they need to to isolate from the start of symptoms not to wait for the test result before you do that and then obviously to support our contact tracing teams to help people to understand if they need to isolate as well thank you James we've now got Mike Griffiths from ITV Wales thank you health minister I'd like to pick up on the the question of tracing you made reference in your address to the surge team that can be deployed in those areas where there are clusters what form does that take and how do they operate so we have regular conversations with who you're running the service and again I'm tremendously grateful to all the staff who are making a difference right across the country local teams employed by local authorities working in partnership with the NHS we do know that because of the pressure we've had challenges in different parts of the country as case numbers have gone up in the recruitment round that is ongoing the Cardiff and Veil service together they are looking to be the host for that national team so we're recruiting extra people in that it should give us then a national surge capacity so if for the sake of argument a team in West Wales find it's got a surge and it needs extra capacity then as well as the regular call for mutual aid with other services will have a national team that can deploy to do that as well and the key advantage we've had is that because people have worked with each other and there's an understanding of where local services are that's developed lots of companies in the public but I do think that that'll mean that we'll have this ability to deploy more rapidly to support those local teams that are under pressure thank you as a follower with the ending of the firebreak from Monday and no question as it seems of enhanced restrictions for those areas where rates are still very very high the issue of compliance is an important one how confident are you that the current penalties and deterrents for not complying say with contact tracing and not complying with the rules that will exist from next week are strong enough and are enough of a deterrent for for people to comply well it's not just about compliance and I think it's wrong just to say this is all about compliance and enforcement it's actually about the first measure of doing what we should do that's what's so important for people to get a test if you've got symptoms to isolate when you've got it because you're actually at your most infectious at that point so you're most likely to give it to people that you see that you work with that you live with your friends so it's really important for people to do the right thing as our starting point the measures we're taking around rules and around the the compliance element is important what we really want to do there is to get people to think about what they should do first off and it's also because we know for lots of people there have been real concerns about getting a test about how quickly they'll get a test and the impact on their working lines especially so for self-employed people and for low paid people and that's why we're introducing the extra support that £500 payment and the additions we've made to people in the social care sector to top up their sick pay so the support and the protect element is hugely important in addition to what we're doing in terms of the compliance so again I'd ask people to do the right thing to look after you your friends your family the people you work with the people you care for and in doing that you'll be playing your part to help keep Wales safe. Thank you Mike you've got Will Hayward from Wales Online. Thank you Health Minister care homes are possibly the part of Wales that are most at risk of coronavirus and yet the public have no idea what the current situation is inside them will you commit to publishing on a weekly basis how many homes in Wales have COVID cases as well as how many residents in Wales currently have the virus? Okay I think we can do something that will have a regular publication because we understand the position that we're in in care homes with the risks that are run and what I want to do is to make sure we have regular and reliable information and I think we'll look at how we have a weekly summary we've done this previously of course and look at where we were with the number of cases in staff and residents which I understand today is at 792 but we'll then want to look at what that means in a percentage of the workforce I think it's just over 3% at present but then to understand the pattern of how that exists and all of this is giving people information but the key point in order this is what we're then doing to protect people in our care and that's both staff and residents and it's why getting on top of community transmission is so important and it's also why we've introduced the sick pay payments to top up on statutory sick pay because we've estimated that 85 to 90% of people in residential care don't have access to anything more than statutory sick pay and again there's a perverse incentive for people to go to work even if they do have symptoms because otherwise they may not be able to afford to pay their bills but I definitely want to make sure we have regular and reliable information that people don't need to go searching for but we're openly providing it. Thank you you've just announced that we've passed the level of the April peak after that it took us over a month to come out of lockdown why do you feel comfortable coming out of the firebreak after just two weeks considering we're at the same level as in April and or will we slow coming out of lockdown in the first wave? Well as we know will in the first wave of the peak we weren't prepared in the same way that we are now we ended elective activity in the middle of March to give us time to prepare for what was coming we've had more time to prepare this time in terms of where our services run but also of course we're living our lives in a very different way at this point in time already so I do think it's the right thing as I've said to make sure that the commitment we gave to the people of Wales about when the firebreak would start and when we end is kept as I say I think there'd be a huge loss of trust in the government if we decided at the very end to try to extend that and equally as we've consistently said we'll see the impact of the firebreak within another two to three weeks after it's ended in terms of the lag and the difference between when you take action and then when you start to see that feed through but it's really about all of us and the choices we make in how we live our lives and again thinking about what we should do and that's the most important point in keeping coronavirus under control and making sure that our NHS can still care for each of us when we need it. Thank you Will and Adam Hale from the Press Association. Afternoon Health Minister, what options are available to you if the firebreak turns ought to be a failed experiment for places like Merthyr and its rates and other places like it continue to rise? Do those places go back into lockdown at the start of December and also given there is this two-week delay as you say expected for the measures to have effect on transmission rates around the country? What a decision about whether we need another sharp national lockdown being made during the last week of November? I think there's so many hypotheticals in there that it's just not at all sense for me to try to predict what will happen in a week to two to three weeks. We've been really clear about the start and the end of a firebreak, really clear about the fact that at the end of the firebreak period we won't have seen the impact that we can be confident the firebreak will have had on reducing the number of cases and it's then about each of us moving forward from this weekend and beyond to think about how we live our lives and what we should do because that's the point to keep the virus under control, to think about how we live our lives, how we keep our friends and our families safe. If we're looking to forecast what will happen in the future, I think people will start to wonder that there is already some kind of commitment or plan to do something different and that just isn't the case. We need to understand the information we're getting, understand the impact of all the hard work that people have not just put into the firebreak but the way that people then live their lives, our lives after the firebreak ends. If we need to do more to keep the people of Wales safe then we will do. As you know, we acted ahead of other parts of the UK in introducing a firebreak in the first place so we're shown we're prepared to be proactive, to act in accordance with the evidence and the science to keep the people of Wales safe but I'm not going to get drawn in to trying to forecast what might happen in two to three weeks time or any other period of time that really depends on what each of us chooses to do in how we live our lives. Thank you. It may sound like there's a lack of contingency patterns there, Health Minister, but moving on. I'm sure you've seen last night's report that we're on an intensive care consultant at the Royal Gwmorgon Hospital saying that more people were dying at the hospital than COVID. She suspected that was because people were presenting earlier later, sorry, with the best. There's some that seems to find the face of what the chief executive of the Welsh NHS, Dr Andrew Goodall, told us earlier in the week that compared to the April peak within hospitals, mortality was down and the use of intensive care beds was down and people seem to be presenting earlier with the virus because of increased testing. Can you clear up for us what is the picture currently in our Welsh hospitals? What I start with, there's no lack of contingency pattern in what we might do. I just don't think it's helpful to get into a hypothetical position when we're actually trying to focus on the end of the firebreak and what we should all be doing in the future. When it comes to the figures that the chief executive of NHS Wales gave and the message from other consultants at the Royal Gwmorgon, I don't think there is a contrast at all actually. The chief executive of NHS Wales was setting out that over the whole country we're not overwhelmed with demand at this point, but the concerns are real and serious and I don't think anyone who would have heard the message that Dr Goodall gave would have thought that we're somehow being complacent or thinking that everything is fine. We know that there are big pressures and pinch points in different parts of our system and come to AppMorganic is at the centre of those pressures at present and the message that we're consistently trying to give us are people to think about what you should do because the virus is real, it has not gone away, it will not have gone away on Monday so the choices we make really do matter. What we are seeing though is over the whole country we haven't used as many critical care beds we did at this point where in terms of the bed usage but we expect that this will increase as we go through the virus and the message you heard from the two consultants was that there are younger people in a hospital bed, people who do need care. We think though when you look at the figures because we can see the chart that you will see in earlier on about the number of over 60s having the virus that will translate into more people needing hospital care that will translate into greater use of our critical care capacity. We know more about the progress of the virus because we have a much bigger testing programme than we did at the start of the year so I don't think the messages are inconsistent it's about reminding people at this point our NHS can and will care for you at this point we're still running non-covid forms of care and treatment but if Covid continues to take off if people don't take the opportunity to reconsider what we should do then we could face real difficulties through the rest of the winter and if the whole country was in the same position as come to Aphmorganic we'd be having to face very different difficult choices and our staff haven't had much of a break so we need to think about the impact on our staff how we care for people and if we want to avoid non-covid harm we need to keep us in control over the virus and that really reinforces the point that losing control of Covid is a really big problem in every area of our life not just in healthcare terms but also impact on the economy too. Thank you Adam now got Dan Bevan from LBC. Thank you health minister good afternoon we've spoken to infectious diseases who tells us that one of the key ways to avoid a future lockdowns and get out of a cycle of rolling lockdowns is to have targeted testing in enclosed settings not just care homes but places like prisons and workplaces like meat plants and manufacturing sites is that something that you've considered and is it something that's possible with the current testing capacity? Well i'm not sure which infectious disease expert you've spoken to but we continue to be guided by the science and the evidence that we are being provided with and that that does look about where we need targeted testing at a population level it does look at whether we need different forms of asymptomatic testing and that's what we're already doing of course in our care homes you have a regular program and I issued a statement about this yesterday on the way that we test our staff recognizing that as a closed environment with vulnerable people who are being cared for as well so the evidence at present doesn't suggest we should have a much broader program of asymptomatic testing of staff and I should explain for those people who don't know asymptomatic testing is where you test people whether they have symptoms or not you just test a whole a whole group of people now if the evidence would have changed on that then we could of course shift our position and we've done that progressively through the pandemic as the evidence base has changed we've made different choices so I wouldn't rule out a future course of action because the evidence may mean that we need to do something different in the future but at this point in time we've had a review on how and why we're testing in different areas and I'm comfortable that's the right place for us to be because where the evidence guides us to deploy our testing resources. Thank you it was Dr Rowland Sam and the former head of communicable diseases at Public Health Wales if you must know minister but thank you for that answer also is the Welsh Government looking on at America currently with concern at the US election considering that president is claiming the election is rigged against him but without providing any evidence for that. Well start with your first point Dr Sam has been very upfront that he doesn't agree with the strategy of the government of the National Health Service of Public Health Wales or any of the four chief medical officers in the United Kingdom. There is always a spectrum of opinion but the large consensus is where we are and as I say we've openly published the scientific evidence underpinning the approach we've taken through the firebreak, we've continued to listen, we've didn't consider different views but ultimately we'll have to consider the direct evidence and advice we get before ministers decide and I'm sure they'll continue to be individual voices in the scientific community who disagree but it comes to the US presidential election. I've got family on my wife's side in America so we take a bit of a personal interest in what's happening in America but from one democracy to another we do think it's really important that democracies can function and can deal with the transition of power between one person and another, one party and another in a way where people respect the results, where people respect the way that people have voted. It's crucial that all people's votes are counted and that whichever side you're on in a democracy you accept those results and you don't try to claim that the result has been stolen from you if you don't like the result. That's dangerous for all of us and if that sort of rhetoric were being used in countries in South America, Africa or Asia we'd be having a very different view on whether that country is a genuine democracy or not so I hope that everyone on whatever side they're on in the current ongoing lengthy counting process in America respects the fact that the American people have their votes cast, counted, then there will be a result and all of us will need to respect whatever the outcome is. Thank you, John. I've now got Mark Hutchings from Five Life. Thanks very much. We stopped people coming into Wales from Covid hotspots but from Monday if you're in Wales you can travel to any part of Wales. It may not be recommended but it's certainly allowed. Does that seem right? Yes, we've been very clear about where we are on what a Covid hotspot doesn't look like in the past. Coming out of the firebreak the gains to be made from a consistent set of national measures and national messages about what we should each do are significant. It's the clear advice we've had from our scientific advisers and of course when it comes to England their own set of rules and regulations for their four week lockdown. I mean that people would actually be breaking English regulations if they travelled into Wales or into England without having a good reason to do so with the rules that are in place out there. The challenge for all of us is again thinking about what we should do, what we should do to keep us safe, family safe, to keep the country safe and how we live our lives in a different way to make sure we don't throw away the hard work and the gains that we expect to have made from our two week long firebreak. And was it a mistake to be quite so definite about the end date of the lockdown? I get the point that you've made a promise that you will intend on keeping but could you not have built in perhaps a provisional extra week if necessary might you do that in the future because it does seem now that we're coming out of the lockdown because we said we would not necessarily because we should. No we always said at the start there'd be a start and an end point and if we'd said there'd be a conditional third week we might extend it a bit further. I think if you go back to when we made that choice the reaction would not have been positive the buy-in we've had from people across the country to support the firebreak would not have been what it is and that's really really important and of course at that point we couldn't have forecasted there'd be a significant and sudden shift in policy in England when there was lots of criticism of the firebreak decision in any event from commentators within Wales and outside at the time. So I think rather than being captain hindsight we should reflect on the choice that we made at the time with the information we had the clear advice we had that the firebreak would make a difference and help us to save lives regain control over the virus and make sure our NHS wasn't overwhelmed but the advice then is that you can have a definitive end point with a lag in the measures coming on board and we'll then open and review where we are as we're going through so we'll publish the information that we have we'll publish our understanding of the impact of the firebreak in the weeks that come ahead and it's all about the choices we make the decisions we make about what we should do how we support each other and how we try to make sure that we don't allow coronavirus to come back with a vengeance with all the harm it has already caused and I think as we look at the firebreak the four-week lockdown in England it should remind all of us about the consequences of allowing coronavirus to control to grow again at a rapid length and the harm that it causes in terms of our health but also the harm that it causes to the economy as well so again we'd ask to think about what we should do over the coming weeks ahead as we exit our firebreak. Thank you Mark and I've got Dan Rivers from ITN. So what can you say to reassure families like the Lewis family in Rhonda who lost three members of their family in five days to Covid that you are doing enough and to reassure them that this is the right decision to end this circuit breaker on Monday? Well first of all I want to say how sorry I am for the loss that the Lewis family have suffered to recognise that there are many other families who are going through the same loss but the human impact of understanding a single family's loss in different generations and then also to recognise that there are some people who still won't accept that this is real that family's loss should reinforce to all of us why we took the decision to introduce a firebreak in the first place and why it's so important for us to respect the way we need to change the way we live our lives in the future so that there aren't even more families going through that same period of loss and not just about the reasons why we introduced a firebreak but it's why we're emphasising what we should be doing in the future because this is both about what the government should do but it's crucially about what each of us do with our friends families and how we live together and that would have the biggest impact on making sure that coronavirus does not grow rapidly again into the future because these are extraordinary measures that we've taken extraordinary measures to close different areas of economic life to order people to stay at home unless they have good reasons to leave and none of us want to do this in the first place it wasn't a decision that i enjoyed taking with other ministers to introduce a firebreak but to please think about the lewis family and to think about how we can act together to try to make sure that we reduce and avoid that harm in the future it's in all of our interests to do so thanks for that um do you have any kind of insights into why some families are so hard hit and why other people are completely asymptomatic i mean it does seem to to be very odd the way some people you know go through what the lewis family has gone through other people everyone in the family can get it and no one has any symptoms well this is part of the reason why we all need to act together because some of the risk factors we know more about but actually there are others where we don't really understand why some people are affected more than others so we know that black and asian groups are more likely um to be seriously affected if they get covered but that isn't the hard and fast rule we know that people with certain healthcare conditions aren't at greater risk as well but we also know that even if you don't suffer great harm you can pass it on to someone else who would then suffer much greater harm as well and that's why the great national effort we've been involved in here in Wales to make sure the firebreak is a success it's important not to lose sight of that and let that go as we come out of the firebreak as well to change positively the way we live our lives and to recognize and in doing so we're all playing our part to help keep Wales safe and of course we'll learn more about coronavirus about who it affects and why but our aim and our objective now is to do the right thing to help keep well safe thank you down i've got Steve Bagnell from the daily post thank you minister and the d-side rainbow hospital is open next week accepted to 30 patients to help with pressures do you think the other rainbow hospitals in north wales will be needed and is there enough stamp to use them if they are required to cope with more cases we may well need to open more rainbow hospitals in north wales and i'm aware that the d-side one is opening at the start of next week and this goes back into our challenge and to recognize how real it is the fact that we're using field hospitals the one that comes after meganic has already got about three dozen people in it it's had people come into it and go out of it and the numbers are still about that level they may need to open up more as well in north wales the fact that a field hospital again is being opened again shows how we plan for the use of field hospitals and we're using them and those rainbow hospitals mean people can come out of our traditional district general hospitals and it's also helping us to maintain non-covid activity as well the risk for all of us is that if we don't take this seriously if we don't think about what we should do when the firebreak ends it's not just that we'll need to staff our field hospitals and yes i am positive that we'll be able to staff those but the challenge then comes what that means for the rest of the service and will it be the case that more covid patients continue to come in to our district general hospitals that will end more non-covid activity that will cause more harm more pressure on our staff and actually you're then leading into a position where the calm that covid causes is much much more widespread and that's exactly what we're trying to avoid change the way we live our lives get to the end of the year and then reassess where we are on a range of factors because if we don't coronavirus we'll have a really significant impact for all of us and government choices can't take away that impact we all need to be part of this thank you minister and we are still seeing a high instance of coronavirus cases in places like northeast wales despite local lockdowns being imposed weeks before the fire break why is this thought to be the case well the biggest factor in the way that coronavirus is spread is the fact that it's a highly infectious disease and it thrives on human contact so if people are still mixing with each other especially indoors that close contact especially physical contact with people is how coronavirus is most likely to be spread and that's the evidence we get my test trace protect teams when they do their contact tracing work and understanding how those events take place it's close contact and most likely to be indoor contact within each other's homes now that then explains why we're saying that there are limited bubbles of people can come together in households it's why we're saying think about what you should do not with the rules allowed but do you need to see other people do you need to have physical contact with them can you do this in a different way can you manage to have less contact and shorter contact all of those things will make a difference and it's hard to ask people to live their lives in a different way if you have a close-knit group of friends and family it's often a big strength then it gives us real comfort and it's part of what we enjoy about life in asking people to live our lives in a different way we recognize this is difficult it's much more difficult though if we go back to position that the lewis family and ronda have faced and think how many more families could go through that how can we avoid that happening in our whole country how can we all play our part to help keep well safe thank you see you've now got Rob Taylor from rexham.com today you've mentioned how localized action is still possible if the sustained changes to how coronavirus is circulating you won't be drawn on hypotheticals and forecasts but did say you'd be looking at information evidence and science so to keep away from the what ifs what are the metrics you're looking at to decide if localized action is needed and what are the trigger points well we'll still continue to look at the rate of positivity in different areas so the number of people for every hundred who test positive we'll still continue to look at the headline infection rates we'll look at pressure on local systems and we've actually published all of this not just in our plan but a range of what we call circuit breaker measures to look at nationally but also look at locally whether that's happening we also take on board and this is different because they're not just if you like hard and fast numeric metrics but we have to look at the evidence we get from local contact tracing teams their ability to keep on top of where they are with the profile in a particular area and the evidence from our consultants in communicable disease about where we're seeing clusters and how whether we can explain where each cluster has come from so it's not quite as simple as there is a list of mathematical equations that lead you to a decision we need to understand the softer intelligence we get and to listen to our experts in local areas about the pattern within each area but if we're going to make any decision then we'll be clear about what that decision is and the basis on which that decision is made we've already confirmed that two weeks after the firebreak ends we'll review and try to understand the position of the evidence at that point we'll then confirm where we are maybe the case that there's no change at that point we'll continue to review the regards what happens after that two-week period what we should do and then ask the public to again remind all of ourselves this is about what we should do together about how we make sure that we keep our friends safe that we keep our community safe thank you and in six months time on the 6th of May it should be the Welsh parliament elections has there been any further discussions on how they might might take place and is there any prospect of a pure postal vote election and with the lead times involved to move to that model is there any timeline for a decision well there are a conversation taking place between each of the parties about what the elections might look like we could have a different sort of election it's not i just think that speculating ahead of what that might mean isn't helpful because there is work the parties are doing and of course there's work that the Llywydd needs to be involved with the presiding officer because of if there were to be changes in the way that needs to take place she needs to be engaged in that too and also we're very serious about the impact on local authorities and the way that the canvass is done the way the electoral register has put together and if there were changes to mechanics to give them enough time to run the election properly so it's the interest of all parties to to try and agree about what we might need to do to make sure that as far as possible we want to make sure that that election goes ahead on the 6th of May I don't want to put off the election I want to make sure people can cast their ballots after five years and to decide who will have the responsibility for guiding Wales through the next phase of the response to coronavirus because the health care response won't be finished by the start of May neither will the economic response and the impact of coronavirus will I think largely determine the first part of the next Welsh Parliament term and I would much rather that people had their democratic say in who that will be on the 6th of May and it would take to me extraordinary for that not to happen. Thank you Rob, I'm now Andrew Nuttall from the Leader. Thank you Minister. Have you got any available update on the common four nations approach towards Christmas? I know that plenty of people are looking forward to Christmas now with Halloween and the bonfire night celebrations over and it's sort of the next thing that people will be looking towards but obviously as it's been said many times before it needs a four nations approach to make it viable across the UK. Well it's our clear preference to have an agreed four nation approach so there is work going on discussing between officials just the same way that that work is ongoing about the end of university term because our students are obviously were often studying in different parts within the UK so just as it's sensible to try to get a four nation approach there it's what our officials are doing following the Cobra meeting that took place recently as well so that work is definitely in train Andrew it's also worth reflecting that Christmas isn't the only important period of time many of us who really enjoy Christmas aren't particularly religious but it's a really important time to want to see families together and that's why I was thinking about what we should do at the end of the fire break is really important. I want people to have contact with their families as they come together whether they're religious or not so the point about what we should do is even more important and of course in the very near future in under two weeks now it'll be the festival of Diwali a major festival for many people in many parts of Wales something that I have enjoyed celebrating with friends and constituents and people across the country but it'll be a different sort of celebration as well so that collective celebration that takes place in community sempers and in temples around the country we won't be able to do that in the same way but again we want people to enjoy Diwali in a way they can still have a shared experience but not in the way that we would have had close contact with hundreds of people gathering together and we want to make sure that we can have an end of year for all of us that we can celebrate and enjoy some of our time with our families to make sure that there are more of us to celebrate future Christmases, future New Year's and future Diwali's in the years ahead. Thank you and I know you have said before that there won't be any sort of solid concrete evidence that how the fire break has affected the country until about a two week lag but are there any sort of early indicators at the moment that you are aware of that the fire break has been working on that hasn't been working the way that you thought it would be and are we able to share what Welsh Government are looking at as sort of a success or a failure market for these last two weeks? We don't have something as easy as a report card that is success or failure it's not quite as simple as that. What we're seeing today is very much the impact of what was happening two to three weeks ago so when I gave those wealth figures of 252.8 I think per 100,000 that reflects what was taking place two to three weeks ago and that's why I've said before there's an element of harm that is baked in before the fire break starts because we'll see the consequence of that mixing in infection rates but also in the further lag excuse me that goes into hospital admissions and then the further lag when it comes to deaths. That's why we acted it's why we said we won't see the impact of that to at least two to three weeks and we'll then have a much better idea. We'll want to look of course at headline infection rates we'll want to understand we're starting to see any form of reduction in bed pressures as well but we'll need to see that going on even further Andrew so that first checkpoint in time we'll want to understand if we're seeing a plateauing or a reduction in our headline case figures and we've been bumping around over this week somewhere around 250 to a bit over 260 so we haven't seen a continued significant exponential growth beyond that. We're still growing it's still at a high rate and that I think will mean that in the coming month or so we're going to see more people ending up in NHS hospitals. The challenge from the fire breaks impact is do we then start to see a reduction in infection rates and that'll give us the confidence that the pressure will then ease across our NHS system and that will mean that we'll have saved a number of people's lives who would otherwise have been in hospitals that could have been overwhelmed and lives that could have needlessly been lost. So it's more information for us to go but as ever you'll continue to hear from myself, from other ministers, from our chief medical officer and indeed the chief executive of NHS Wales openly tell the people of Wales what the position is and what we are asking them to continue doing to take care of each other and to make sure that we keep well safe. And finally Tom Magner from Carersworld. Thank you very much indeed Health Minister. Can I just ask you about two reports just published by Carers Wales. Track the Act shows that for unpaid carers the Social Services and Wellbeing Act wasn't working effectively pre-pandemic. Their COVID-19 impact report also just published shows that the unpaid carer situation has worsened as the pandemic rolls on. Now you've given extra money to local authorities for local carer services through the second supplementary budget but it seems that real support is not reaching the parts that it should do. Possibly undermining the vital role that unpaid carers play in Wales that you frequently acknowledged in these briefings. In hindsight should you not have ring fenced an element of the money given to local authorities for unpaid carer support services and for the future will you commit now to ring fencing such vital funds for services to unpaid carers? While a debate about ring fencing is always attractive at the outset and we regularly find it's very difficult then to apply in practice because it often ends up as a ceiling to the way that resources are used. What we need to make sure is that as we get through the pandemic that we continue to recognise the role of unpaid carers and define ways to support them because I recognise that the length of time that unpaid carers have had to care for loved ones in a different way with extra pressure has an impact on how people can cope and the ability to get respite is different now so it is a matter that ministers are generally concerned about but not just ministers to be fair in my conversation with the local authority members both leaders and those people responsible for social care they're generally concerned about how they care for this group of unpaid carers that they are responsible for as well so I would expect that the reports have been published will not to be of interest here but they'll definitely be of interest to local authority leaders and social care cabinet members to think about how we can try to successfully adapt the way that we support people in the here and now but also in the future and that's going back to making sure that the rights that carers have are real and are implemented and that's what we're looking to do if we were to set a budget line we may find that a hard fast budget rule may actually get in the way of providing the right support for carers in different parts of their lives to make sure that it's something that people don't just feel a sense of duty to do but something where you're helped to do that and you find it a part of your life that you're still enjoying because many unpaid carers of course see it as part of what they want to do as well and sometimes I think the public debate is about a sense of duty and almost a sense of unhappiness whereas I know that it's something that does for many people give them a real sense of fulfilment. Thank you for that answer we'll see what our viewers tell us in the coming hours and days and in terms of what they're telling us as well they've heard in various briefings not just exclusively in Wales the use of a term called informal carers there's been somewhat of a backlash amongst our viewers on the use of this term using such words as disrespectful demeaning makes light of what we do how important you believe that it is to make sure that you mean and always mean unpaid carers and that lack of clarity fails to recognise a huge contribution that you acknowledge they make well again I do acknowledge a huge contribution that unpaid carers make and I know that whilst for some people as I say it's something that they find fulfilling for other people it's hard and it's difficult particularly when support is more difficult to access as well I've only ever referred to unpaid carers and I'll continue to do so to term that people understand and recognise and I do think that from our point of view being consistent in our language does matter and not looking to try to shift the goalpost because sometimes when people use new terminology it's almost as if you're trying to downplay what they're doing that's certainly not what we're trying to do it is something that I think you'll find a consistent message on from ministers here and we want people to know that it's not just how we value you now but also in the future and in these really difficult times it isn't just unpaid carers we're concerned about but we recognise we are generally all in this together we all need to play our part it's government supporting people health and social care supporting people and people supporting each other and unpaid carers at the very heart of that so I'm tremendously grateful as ever Tom for your questions and the work of unpaid carers who you regularly and fearlessly champion I look forward to coming back to a future question and answer sessions and hopefully we'll have more positive news in the future about our continuing national struggle with coronavirus and the harm that is already caused many thanks your time