Wales has announced a travel ban in force from Friday, that will prevent people from certain Covid 'hotspots' in the UK entering the country.
The Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford announced the restrictions in a written statement this afternoon - in a bid to protect rural areas from the virus as it travels from more urban, highly populated areas.
The restrictions are expected to come into force from 6pm on Friday, and immediately prevent travel from the central belt of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and certain areas in England.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: Christmas market set to go ahead despite pandemic
Mr Drakeford said: “The number of cases across Wales is growing and our health service is coming under pressure.
“To keep Wales safe, the Welsh Government is therefore amending the Regulations to make it clear that people living in areas with a high-prevalence of coronavirus in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland would not be able to travel to parts of Wales where there is a low prevalence.
“It is vital that we keep communities which have low levels of infection as safe as possible and this sensible and necessary restriction will help prevent the virus moving from more urban, highly populated areas to more sparsely populated areas.
“It is already prohibited for people to travel into a local health protection area here whether they come from other parts of Wales, the UK or from other countries.
“As with the rules for Local Health Protection Areas there are some exceptions such as work or providing charitable or voluntary services when those cannot be carried out where they live.
READ MORE: Coronavirus: more than 5000 Scots infected each day
“We also recognise that this is a particularly difficult time for children and young people and we will also amend the regulations to allow children to leave their local health protection areas to play sport or participate in other activities such as drama or dance classes which are so important to their mental and physical health and wellbeing.
“If we all continue to work together, we can protect ourselves and families and keep Wales safe.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel