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Wales Online
Wales Online
Politics
Ruth Mosalski

Latest Welsh Government review of Covid rules to take place this week

The latest review of Covid rules in Wales will take place this week. The Welsh Government has said that if the situation remained stable the last rule would be lifted from May 9.

As it stands, Wales is at Alert Level Zero, and the only legal requirement is to wear masks in healthcare settings. On Tuesday, May 3, education minister Jeremy Miles said that the move from pandemic towards endemic meant he was removing almost all rules for schools. Instead of schools having to follow a framework, they can set their own rules. It means that facemasks will not be mandatory from Monday. You can catch up on that here.

At the last review it was announced that businesses wouldn't need to complete specific risk assessments from April 18. The next review is expected to be announced on Thursday.

Read more : Wales' most polluted street is finally demolished

What are the latest case rates?

It's no longer simple to use data to look at case rates as testing rules changed. The latest information from Public Health Wales shows 115 new cases bringing the total to 872,498. Four deaths were reported bringing the total to 7,375.

We can also look at patients with Covid in hospital beds. That has averaged 616 a day over the past week - a 24% drop on the previous week and a third down on a month ago.

The number of infections out in the community has been considerably more than previous peaks but only 86 (19%) of confirmed Covid patients in acute beds on April 28 were being primarily treated for the virus, with 369 in hospital to be treated for other conditions.

Public Health Wales figures show the positive proportion of tests is between 14% and 18% when you compare each council area in Wales.

Will anything change?

You'd wager it's unlikely because those case rates will still be causing Welsh Government concern because of any extra pressure that adds to hospitals. The announcement about schools was fairly big so no doubt Welsh Government will want to watch the impact of that before looking at changing rules in healthcare settings.

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