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The First Minister of Wales said he was following the advice by SAGE by implementing a firebreak period across the country. Mr Drakeford added the effectiveness of the lockdown in combating the spread of COVID-19 is not down to the Welsh Government and will be decided by the people of Wales.
Mr Drakeford said during his coronavirus press briefing: “The advice to us from our chief medical officer from SAGE is that we need a short but deep firebreak period to interrupt the transmission of this virus.
“We need to do it simply and uniformly, a Wales-wide effort is the best way to make us all safe.
“We are balancing all the time the need to save lives and save livelihoods.
“The advice we have is that provided we all do the right thing and we make these next two weeks count then we will be able to get through to Christmas without needing to repeat this sort of measure.
“That really does depend not on what the Government does but that every person in Wales takes this seriously and helps us get this back under control.
“That way we can get through to Christmas together.”
Mr Drakeford added: “Our ambition is we will not need to have this level of restriction again in Wales before Christmas.
“I want to offer people some hope that, provided we all do the right things, then we will still be able to enjoy a version of the holiday that we would have otherwise enjoyed.”
The Welsh Conservative Party’s leader in the Senedd, Paul Davies slammed the national lockdown.
He said: “The first minister is taking us into a Wales-wide lockdown without publishing the full data to justify it, the details of what they are going to achieve during the lockdown and now we don’t know what the situation is going to be at the end of it.”
“People are concerned that this second Wales-wide lockdown is just the start of rolling lockdowns.”
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price was also critical of Mark Drakeford’s lockdown decision.
He said: “No-one wants to live in a perpetual state of coming in and out of lockdowns.
“For the sake of public health and our economy, this break has to be the start of a different approach.”
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