 Well, good afternoon everybody, pan hwnnw dda pawb. I'm very pleased to be talking to you today on the day where we have seen our very youngest pupils start to return to their classrooms and for some of our vocational learners who are set to return to colleges across Wales. As I have said many times, the opening up of education remains our top priority as a government and I would like to thank everyone in the education sector involved in making today's return possible. And I would also like to thank everyone in Wales for following the rules and for the sacrifices that you have made. It is those sacrifices which have given us the headroom that we need to get learners back into schools and colleges. As the First Minister indicated on Friday, we now want to go even further in a phased and flexible way. Today I am joined by Dr Chris Jones once again Wales's Deputy Chief Medical Officer to talk through our science and public health indicators and then to outline our next steps to enable more of our young people to return to schools and colleges from the 15th of March. Over to you Dr Jones. Thank you Minister. Well, I'm pleased to say that case numbers, levels of community transmission and test positivity rates are decreasing. So I'll now go through that data with slides that you're becoming familiar with. So you recognise this slide which is the weekly confirmed case rates per 100,000 people and you'll see that after the peak in late December there's been a very substantial decrease from a maximum of around 630 back in December to around 80 cases per 100,000 now which is a more than 80% reduction and the current level is significantly lower than at a number of previous points when schools and colleges have been fully open. So this is a national average but I'm pleased to note that we're seeing significant decreases in some areas where we have had high case rates notably the north east of Wales and for example just in the last three weeks Wrexham has fallen from 300 cases per 100,000 to around 80 today. So this is really encouraging particularly given the presence of the new more transmissible variant and is the result of everyone's efforts and sacrifices over the last several weeks. This is the slide also that you're becoming familiar with of hospitalisation rates for Covid. Any relaxation of measures should be undertaken in a phased way looking at the balance of harms and our continuing assessment of the risks including the pressure on the NHS. As you can see from this slide the top grey line represents the total number of Covid related patients in our hospitals. The number remains high at around 1,800 but it has stabilised and started to fall. You'll recognise this is a delayed indicator as hospitalisation follows some weeks after case rates are identified. So we will continue to monitor this carefully alongside our other indicators in assessing the potential impact of any changes before each new phase of more pupils returning. Keeping the reproduction number the R number below one is an important measure in allowing a return to more face-to-face learning as it implies that case rates are decreasing. As you can see from this slide Sage estimates the R in Wales to be currently between 0.6 and 0.9 which gives us some headroom for cautious relaxations of restrictions. It compares well to the position in the summer and is significantly down from the period before Christmas. So before handing back to the minister I want to give a quick update on our vaccination progress and I'm pleased to report that more than 860,000 people have now had their first dose of the vaccine in Wales with over 42,000 having had their second dose as well. So this means that over 25 per cent a quarter of Wales population has had their first dose vaccination. And if you look at the comparison of the countries with the green line representing Wales you can see that our performance matches very well that of any of the other UK nations. And we are still on track to reach the next milestone of offering vaccination to everyone in priority groups 5-9 by the end of April providing vaccine supplies remain on course. Thank you Dr Jones. So if conditions continue to improve as we have been seeing over the next three weeks we will be in a position to see all of our primary aged children start to return to their classrooms from March 15. At the same time we would also like to see those in years 11 and 13 in schools and those doing similar qualifications in colleges able to return to face-to-face learning in a safe and flexible way. Where possible we also want to give some flexibility around other learners such as year 12 and those in year 10 who may also have been entered for qualifications this summer. Unfortunately for those learners in secondary settings or colleges this won't necessarily be a return to full time on site learning. However we will do all that we can to support these learners because I know how anxious this time can be as they consider key decisions about their next steps in life. Last time I spoke to you at the press conference I announced how our education staff would be tested twice weekly as part of our testing strategy and today I'm pleased to say that this will now be extended to older learners in years 11 to 13 and those in FE settings. This testing will be done through lateral flow devices which means they could be done from a learner's home and which will assist with the planned return for older pupils from the 15th of March. I do want to be clear once again we are told time and time again that due to the hard work of local education authorities head teachers and education staff of all kinds our education premises are safe but it is the added movement around them that contributes to the R number. So I must make a plea to all learners parents and carers to please continue to follow the guidelines. By following the guidance and restricting contact with others we are ensuring that children and young people are able to do what we all want which is to be back learning with their friends. What you have done so far has allowed us to get children back into the classroom from today but we're now working on how we can see the safe return of more learners to schools and colleges. We will confirm the situation for other learners before the Easter holidays but I can tell you now that my preference is to get all learners back in school after the break and I promise to provide further details on how this will look when I am able to do so. I want to thank you all again for everything that you've done to keep Wales safe and to keep Wales learning and for creating the headroom that we need to get more children and young people back into the classroom. Already today I've seen some lovely lovely photos of learners returning to school and this has all been made possible because of what you have done. Diolch yn fawr. We will now turn as always to questions from our colleagues in the media and all questions are are streamed on social media should you wish to follow all of the questions that are asked today and we're going to begin I understand by going to BBC hand Bethan Lewis. Bethan. Afternoon you've set out a broad timetable which would seem all pupils back in three weeks time and then you've acknowledged that you know some pupils aren't going to be back until after Easter. At the same time today it looks like in England they'll be saying that there'll be a much fuller return of pupils from the 8th of March almost all pupils back straight away. Can I just have your thoughts on that and the potential then for all pupils to be back in England when there are still some pupils not back for four or five weeks after that in Wales. Also Dr. Jones could I ask you presumably the same sort of evidence is being looked at around schools and could I get your thoughts on what would explain the divergence in approaches. Well thank you very much Bethan. I haven't received any new evidence or advice that supports a different approach to the one that we're taking here in Wales. Our phased and very careful approach is in line with the public health advice that I have received and in fact is also consistent with UK wide advice. If there is different information and new information available which contradicts our careful approach then clearly we would want to consider that. Bethan you know that I am as keen as anyone to see as many pupils and students back in schools and colleges as possible and we will continue to go forward measuring our possible actions against the indicators set by TAG and we've made a very good start today but we will continue to follow the data and the evidence and the advice as is given to me. Dr Jones. Yes thank you Bethan. I mean we share the same ambition as colleagues in England which is to prioritise children getting back to school and I suppose we've been able to make the first change this week ahead of England but we do still recognise that we're in a fairly critical position here. If we relax restrictions too quickly we face a very substantial risk of a big increase in cases and hospitalisation and deaths. So I think a cautious approach is the approach that we've been advising ministers in Wales so far. We know that opening schools will increase the R value and we know that that will also depend to some extent on the presence of the new variants the extent to which the R number will vary with schools opening. So I think a cautious approach where we introduce the lowest risk children back to school first evaluate the impact of that that will teach us a great deal and then we'll be able to work with ministers to progress more rapidly thereafter hopefully but we do have to be very cautious here we still have a vulnerable population and a significant risk of cases increasing. Thank you Minister you also said the one secondary school children start returning it would necessarily be on a full time basis on site could you just explain a bit more about how that would work and also say how long you would anticipate that sort of arrangement could last could it be until the summer. Well thank you Bethan what we do know from the evidence and the epidemiology that older pupils act and react with the virus in a similar way to adults so we have to be very cautious going forward with older pupils so we're working with our local education authorities and with those head teachers that run our secondary schools on looking at a range of ways in which children can be introduced back into the classroom but we do that as safely as we possibly can so for instance that potentially is looking at rotors cutting class sizes different types of timetabling so that children get the face-to-face contact that they need but looks to minimise the impact of opening up on the overall public health situation and also looks to minimise disruption to those individual pupils by keeping their bubbles smaller keeping their class sizes smaller and we will be providing advice and examples of how schools can utilise that. Now of course each individual school is different you know when I think about you know large high schools or sixth one colleges or colleges with large cohorts that's a very different challenge than potentially getting children back to a smaller rural high school where class sizes are smaller because there's simply a smaller number of pupils so that's why we do need to have some flexibility to allow schools to identify the learners and the options that work best for them and clearly how long these things go on for we will as always be guided by the advice and if we can you know increase those operations because it is safe to do so then obviously we will do that but it is impossible at this stage to say exactly how long those arrangements may need to go on for as we go further along and Dr Jones will be able to explain this better than I but as we go further along into the vaccination programme as we go into the spring and into the summer the balance of harms and the necessity of restricting not just activities and education but activities in the wider world does change but we have to take this careful approach a testing how things go and being able to monitor the effect on the public health situation before we take the next steps that's very clearly the advice to me it's very clear the advice in the UK context about that's the way to proceed but Dr Jones don't know if there's anything we could add I suppose I would add that although the vaccination programme is progressing remarkably well it is a great success we're still quite a long way off having the people who are most vulnerable vaccinated with two doses you know we're not anticipating that being the case for another couple of months by that time we hope that the impact of high case rates on the NHS and on death rates will be reduced because of the effect of the vaccine but that is still some considerable way off if we were to relax restrictions back now with the vulnerable population we've got we would undoubtedly cause harm so we have to wait and this is an ever this is likely to be an ever-changing discussion as we as the vaccination programme progresses but there hopefully will come a time when actually we can relax a great deal more whilst at the same time not seeing the harmful outcomes but there will still be some harms associated with Covid spreading in younger people the risks of long Covid the risks of new mutations arising and even the impact of multiple isolation periods and and all that so it's always going to be I think this year quite a difficult set of nuanced discussions which will change with time but at the moment the risks remains high thank you for that we'll now turn to Mike Griffiths at ITV Wales good afternoon Mike good afternoon to you both I'd like to ask on the proposals and the discussions around maybe periods of catch-up that may be needed adjustments to the summer holidays potentially where you stand on that currently well it is really important that we recognise the significant interruption to every child's education in Wales as a result of Covid and despite the best efforts of teachers and support staff to keep our children and students learning we have to acknowledge that interruption we've already invested in excess of 30 million pounds in this academic year and we have a thousand extra staff working in in schools to address that interruption but clearly that we we need to look into the longer term as how we can support support schools and support children so once again it's we are working with our education lists our local authorities and our teaching unions as to how best we can identify the resources needed and utilise those resources I I've said this before I have long you know argued about the need to revamp how we operate our academic year those challenges that we were aware of previously haven't gone away because of Covid indeed perhaps Covid is amplified some of the challenges of prolonged periods outside of school and there is a discussion to be had about whether changing the academic year is the appropriate thing to do and we will have those discussions but in the here and now what is dominating our thinking and our work is to get children back in the here and now and then work on ensuring that there is the resource and the support needed to ensure that children are back learning again motivated again and looking forward to their to their future and supported by edgy education staff who are resource to be able to do that. Thank you I'd like to put the topic of vaccination clearly it's an emotive subject often beside the you know the scientific side of it and the the progress that we know is happening the suggestion that teachers should be treated a priority group is not one that's gone away despite debates on either side of that where do we stand on that now and assuming we hit our target for our current groups in the end of April where will teachers be as a group after that will they be next in line potentially. Well Mike first of all can I say you know what an amazing amazing effort over these recent months by our vaccination teams the Lent and Breth the Wales and the graph that Dr Jones showed you is testament to that massive logistical challenge and the efforts that are going on in our local health boards and our primary care settings with volunteers everybody determined to get as many vaccinations out there as possible and we're making really really really good progress. We will be guided by as always the advice of the JCVI this is an independent committee of experts who are there to advise governments on how best to deliver an immunisation and a vaccination programme and they've done that on the basis of risk who is more likely to suffer significant harm or tragically death as a result of contracting COVID and that's why the vaccination groups are set out as they are. We await further advice from JCVI on what should happen after April when the first one to nine groups have been have been vaccinated and of course whatever the JCVI recommend that's what the Welsh Government will follow with regards to teachers you know I understand the anxiety and I as I understand the anxiety of all of our frontline workers but when it comes to teachers I think it bears repeating once again that in terms of deaths hospitalisations or even test positivity thankfully our teachers and our teaching assistants are at no greater risk than the general population but Dr Jones you you can give some further details I'm sure on what JCVI are looking at next yeah so for the the current approach as you know is to get through the nine high risk groups which represent 99% of all deaths due to COVID and so all countries are signed up to that and that's what the plan is until April and there's no place to vary from that. Phase two though is the wider rollout throughout the population and we await JCVI advice about that I think we'll probably hear something over the next couple of weeks my sense is that age will still be a very important factor in the prioritisation of that rollout because it still determines outcome. Occupation is quite a difficult thing to put into such a program because it is often very hard to disentangle the effect of the workplace from travelling to the workplace and other factors in individual people's lives and you will understand how much we value the work of teachers from what we've said about our focus on children's outcomes you know we know that children are being harmed by the current situation with schools closed so we do need teachers to go back to do their valuable job however teachers even if there was an occupational slant to the JCVI guidance probably would not be top of the list there are unfortunately other occupations which represent significantly higher risks than the general population whereas generally teachers are actually lower risks than the general population. Thanks Dr Jones we're now going to go to Abbey Witech at Wales online and I understand Abbey you've been at Uscol Gwain and Anton the Rail of Glamorgan this morning. Yes yes I have and everyone was very pleased to be to be back there and the head teacher was hopeful that his older pupils would be back soon and that was one of the questions I want to ask you seem to have just indicated that obviously you can't know yet whether there'll be a full time return to all learners on site even next term given that you've said that education and getting everyone back is a priority what might we now be in a position where people can go on holiday move around different parts of Wales yet all learners aren't back or are we looking at a situation where we're going to be in this kind of lockdown till potentially the end of next term I mean surely that can't be the case what are your thoughts there on really the likelihood of learners being back full time on site next term? Well Abbey what's really important is that we continue as a nation to do the work that creates the headroom for us to get more children and young people back to school and I am the first minister and indeed the government as a whole are determined that that is our top priority to create that headroom and to use it to maximise face to face learning and I'm pleased that the first minister has you know repeatedly said that now I acknowledge that there will be some children the potential that will not be able to go back to face to face learning this side of the Easter holidays but as I said in my opening statement my preference is to get all children back to face to face teaching after Easter but I can say that whether the virus will allow us to do that of course is a different thing and as always rather than just focusing on dates we will be focusing very much on what the public health situation allows us to do if we can go faster and the advice is that we can go faster believe me I will grab that with both hands and we will get more children and young people back but we have to be guided by the advice and the evidence to make sure that it is safe safe to do so and it doesn't result in a deteriorating public health situation once again because that won't be good for children nor the rest of society. Thank you. Yes, I understand that. I'm sorry I mean Dr Jones something to add I'm so sorry. I didn't have much to add but I suppose the way I would see it is that the return to school agenda is the fixed point and this is like a well it's not fixed in terms of time but it is a fixed intention as we move back from the restrictions that we face but we also clearly have wider responsibilities to everyone's health and well-being and the economy as well so we will have to actually make sure that we don't extend the period of lockdown longer for everyone and it should then should be the case so we'll have to be bearing all that in mind alongside this this fixed point which is our intention to get children back to school it all has to be balanced out together. Thank you so is that to say that other lockdown restrictions may be eased before all our learners are back on site full time? Well Abby as I said the intention is from the government to use what available headroom we have to prioritise children and young people that will not that will not change there may be other headroom that allows us to do other things. We also have to recognise the complexity of schools as organisations in the sense that they have potentially large numbers of both pupils but also adults working in those circumstances so we have to make sure that we organise education in a way that maximises face-to-face contact but also does not jeopardise further disruption in those schools but as I said the top priority of this government is to get children and young people back to face-to-face learning if there are other things that can be done done alongside that then the government as Chris said will balance the the needs of the entire population but children and young people are our priority. Thank you Abby we'll go to Dan Bevan at LBC. Thank you very much Minister and to yourself Dr Jones as well good afternoon to you both but this is more of a question for yourself Minister just picking up on something that you said in response to Bethan earlier based on what you said you seem to hint that the Prime Minister's plan for schools is is not a cautious approach if you've both got the same advice but you're coming up with a plan to get to school let's get schools back nearly a month apart I wonder do you think that his approach is wrong? Oh Dan it's not for me to comment on or or prejudge decisions that other education ministers or indeed other governments are doing what I can do is follow the advice that is given to me and we are seeing a return today in Wales ahead of England because of the hard work of the public in Wales that has created the headroom that has allowed Dr Jones and others that advise the government that our youngest pupils can return and I will continue to be guided by that advice as they said we've set out our plans hopefully for the 15th of March if there is more that we can do because the situation allows us to do that we will but I'm here to follow the advice that I've been given here in Wales the approach that is very similar to the ones that has been taken in Europe very similar to the approach taken in the United States and indeed in Scotland where they too today will see the return of some of the youngest pupils it's very clear from reading the evidence and to listening to the advice a slow and cautious return to school allows us to monitor impact to make sure we're doing it properly and make sure we don't jeopardize the hard work of the Welsh public in getting us to this situation but Dr Jones I don't know if there's anything you can add Dan I think I would wish to reassure you that we have a very well established well-developed advisory mechanism here in Wales you know we see the analyses of SAGE, SPYM, the other big kind of UK groups that analysis is all considered by our own technical advisory cell within Welsh Government which has a number of subgroups including one on children and young people in educational settings so we do have a very well established advisory mechanism and the chief medical officer's office as well so there is there is some robustness in the advice that we can give our ministers back to you Dan thank you very much both and this is more of a question for the both of you can we just get some reaction to the study coming out of Scotland this afternoon regarding the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine reports that it's cutting hospitalisation there by up to 94% does that change your thinking in any way when it comes to in your case minister decisions that you're making with regards to lockdown vaccine rollout et cetera and for yourself Dr Jones when it comes to advising well Dan you know that's very very encouraging news coming out of Scotland and can give us some confidence as we go forward as Dr Jones said earlier when looking on how we unlock ourselves from the situation we find ourselves in whether that be in education or wider society there are a number of factors that we need to take into consideration hospitalisation and pressure on our own chairs is one of those key factors and of course if we're seeing vaccination keeping people out of hospital then that has got to be good news for how we can move forward I mean I think it probably is still a bit early to be clear about the effect of the vaccine in the UK you know we have seen almost a 50% reduction in confirmed COVID cases in our hospitals since the peak but that's at the same time as we've had about an 80% reduction in case numbers as well so that does seem to correlate in itself and very hard to attribute the effect of the vaccine additionally to that the changes in the case rates in the over 60s compared to the under 60s are similar in Wales at present but I would hope that we will start to see a reduction in the case rates over 60s soon I mean the data that's emerging from other countries is very reassuring on this particularly Israel where we know they've had a very accelerated vaccine rollout and they've definitely seen a reduction in transmission but also a reduction in hospitalisations and deaths so we are very hopeful that this will happen but I just think it's slightly early at the moment we're also desperate down not way to look for that good news but it's always wise to you know remember a little bit of caution in how these things are interpreted thank you Diane and finally we go to Harry Evans at the daily post good afternoon Harry last week investigations were ongoing to how a person in Conwy called the South Africa variants of the virus is there an update on those investigations and have there been any further cases of variants of concern reported in Wales in the past week or so well Harry I'm going to turn to Dr Jones of course new variants are always of course concerned for us and that's one of the reasons why we're taking our cautious approach in the reopening of restrictions Dr Jones my understanding is that we have 17 probable cases of the South African variant in Wales and that those cases are associated with the travel history in all but I think two cases the case you mentioned is one of those two but I don't feel I can comment any more in any individual case but that is the situation as I understand it and there's no sign of Brazilian variants present back to you Harry and with the physical and mental health impact of lockdown on children in particular what role will PE and sports play in pupils education over the coming months well Harry you're absolutely right what we know that being out of school you know is so tough on our children and young people and the ability to get children back into school and engaged in a rich curriculum including artistic endeavours as well as sport is important but clearly we need to do that in a safe and COVID secure way so again we will be ensuring that there is advice to school there are definitely physical activities that children can engage in safely and we certainly want to see them all moving around and whether there are mitigations that we have to put in place to ensure people are safe but the more time our pupils can spend outside whether permitting then that's the better and them and I think it's really important that we give our schools the freedom and to be able to design a curriculum at this stage that really focuses on children's health and well-being because we know unless we get well-being right then children cannot learn and that's why we've taken steps to ensure that schools have that flexibility to be able to really strongly focus on well-being of young people as well as their academic learning. I think that brings us to the close of today can I thank you all once again and to thank Dr Jones for his attendance and his continued support to our work in education and thank you once again for creating the headroom please keep on following the rules and guidance it makes a massive difference