A SCIENCE expert has backed plans for a 'circuit-breaker' lockdown in Wales.

Professor Stephen Reicher said Wales was doing the "right" thing, and called on the rest of the UK to follow.

Speaking to BBC News this morning, Professor Reicher, a member of the behavioural science advisory group for SAGE, said the country was in a "crisis".

He said: "The aim of a circuit breaker is an emergency measure, it is when you are in a crisis and I think we are in a crisis.

"The problem we have is that in the UK, and in England, in every single area the infections are going up.

"Hospitalisations are going up, and deaths will follow."

Professor Reicher said figures had quadrupled since SAGE recommended a circuit breaker lockdown, but that Wales was doing the right thing by acting now.

He added: "Remember on September 21, when SAGE came out with a recommendation for a so called circuity breaker with strong measures, infections were about 4,500 per week.

"They are now four times that, they are now pushing up towards 20,000 a week.

READ MORE:

"I think what Wales is doing is right and I think it would be sensible to do exactly the same around England as well."

The Welsh Government are meeting this morning to discuss plans for a "short, sharp" lockdown in the country.

Speaking on Friday, first minister Mark Drakeford said: "We are not returning to where we were in March of this year, because in March we had an open-ended lockdown, a lockdown which nobody knew when it would end,” he said.

“We are considering a fixed period of a circuit breaker, and that I think is something very different.

“If we have a circuit breaker, it will be for a defined period of time. After that defined period of time, a different set of rules will be necessary.

“It will not be prolonged indefinitely in the way that the regime earlier in the year had to be prolonged because that wouldn’t be a circuit breaker – that isn’t what Sage is recommending; it’s not what our own technical advisory group is saying to us.”