Covid in Wales: Restrictions needed ‘for the foreseeable future’

image copyrightGetty Images image captionCovid restrictions are costing the Welsh economy about £10m a week, according to analysis by government officials

More than 80% of Wales’ population will need to be vaccinated or been infected with Covid-19 to prevent ongoing transmission of the Delta variant, Welsh government scientists have said.

The first minister said a “balance” of restrictions and vaccinations would be required “for the foreseeable future”.

Analysis by government officials estimated current restrictions are costing the economy about £10m a week.

About 70% of the population has had at least one dose of the Covid vaccine.

An estimated eight in 10 adults, or 82.7% of the adult population in Wales have antibodies, according to official analysis at the start of June.

In a paper dated 15 June, the Welsh government’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG) of scientific advisors, estimated over 80% of all people – not just adults – “will need to be either vaccinated or infected to prevent ongoing chains of transmission”.

Asked on the BBC Politics Wales programme what the gap between current coverage and the estimated 80% herd immunity threshold meant for Wales, First Minister Mark Drakeford said: “It leaves Wales not relying wholly and exclusively on vaccination as the only thing we can do to prevent coronavirus from overwhelming the health service again.

“The social distancing, the mask-wearing, the hand-washing, all those things are a defence against coronavirus, as is vaccination.

“First of all, we press ahead with the vaccination programme to try to get as close to that 80% figure as we can.

“The more we push the vaccination numbers up, we hope, the fewer other restrictions we will need.

“And for the time being, it’s going to be a balance between those two things,” he added.

media captionCovid Third Wave: Wales ‘two to three weeks behind’ England and Scotland

On Friday, the Welsh government decided to pause making major relaxations for coronavirus rules for four weeks, while Mr Drakeford said a third wave of Covid-19 cases was already under way.

If the government is to ease those restrictions in July, Mr Drakeford told Politics Wales the key factor “will be the extent to which vaccination has altered the relationship between falling ill on the one hand and needing to be in a hospital bed on the other”.

The Delta variant first identified in India “became the dominant variant in Wales in late May-June”, according to TAG.

Analysis from Public Health England (PHE) suggested that when it comes to the Delta variant, two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 96% effective against hospitalisation, while two doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca is 92% effective.

Asked whether the PHE analysis provided enough evidence of the vaccines’ impact on hospitalisations, Mr Drakeford said “let’s hope that that turns out to be the case when there is more research available, when there’s a bigger pool to draw on”.

“The Public Health England survey is at the start of the third wave,” he said.

“We know, and we are told, that we need better evidence than that to be confident that we can withstand the impact that the worst sort of third wave would have on our hospitals.”

Officials statistics indicate that on Thursday 17 June, of the 8,219 people in Welsh hospitals, only 112 (1.3%) were in with Covid-19, be they recovering, confirmed or suspected to have coronavirus.

Mr Drakeford said: “The bulk of people who are falling ill have not been vaccinated but there still are significant numbers of people who’ve had a first vaccine and smaller numbers of people who’ve been vaccinated twice.”

Lockdown rules covering wedding and civil partnerships, receptions and wakes in Wales change on Monday with the number of guests based on how many can be “safely accommodated” at venues.