Covid-19 restrictions eased on exercising locally, says Mark Drakeford

Covid-19 restrictions on exercising locally are being eased, the First Minister has announced.

From the tomorrow, the rules will change to allow for up to four people from two different households to exercise outdoors together in order to help people who have been struggling with the lockdown, Mark Drakeford said.

However, this does not apply to private gardens, and he also stressed that people still cannot travel by car to exercise with others.

The First Minister also announced other minor changes to the rules. The law will be changed to allow licensed wedding venues, such as visitor attractions and hotels, to re-open but only to perform wedding and civil partnership ceremonies, from March 1

Sport Wales will make arrangements for more of our talented athletes to resume training and playing.

With more people living and working in older people’s care homes being vaccinated, the Welsh Government will look again at its guidance for care home visiting.

‘Huge challenge’

The First Minister said: “I know the last few months of lockdown have been a huge challenge for so many of us, but I want to thank everyone for the way we have worked together as a team to drive infection rates down.

“As coronavirus cases fall, and our successful vaccination programme protects more people every day, there are reasons to be optimistic.

“Our youngest learners will begin going back to school from 22 February and, if the situation continues to improve over the next three weeks, we hope more primary school children and older students will be able to return from 15 March.

“We are also able to make some very modest changes to the regulations from 20 February as we take some very cautious steps to relax some of the strictest lockdown restrictions we have all been living with for so long.

“We are seeing encouraging green shoots as we move into spring, with better weather and brighter days ahead, coronavirus cases falling and our amazing vaccine roll-out continuing at pace. We have seen, however, time and again the world over, just how quickly the situation can deteriorate in a matter of weeks. But, if we work together to keep Wales safe, we will see more elements of normal life returning.”

The next three-week review of the regulations will also consider the restrictions around non-essential retail and close contact services.

The Welsh Government’s traffic-light Coronavirus Control Plan has been revised to take account of the emerging new variant strains of the virus and the impact of the vaccine programme.