TALKS will enter a second day to decide if Wales and the UK will make any late changes to the coronavirus restrictions this Christmas.

First minister Mark Drakeford, his Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts, and the UK government's cabinet office minister Michael Gove all met this afternoon to discuss the matter.

There is growing uncertainty over the plans to relax restrictions across the UK for the Christmas period, covering December 23-27.

Currently, up to three households will be able to join together for that period, in a move designed to let families see each other for festivites after a long and difficult year.

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Mr Drakeford said the current plans were a “hard-won agreement” and that he will “not lightly put it aside” ahead of the meeting on Tuesday.

But Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has argued there was a case for lessening the planned freedoms for the festive period to combat a rise in infections, indicating she could break with the four-nations approach.

Following this afternoon's meeting, a Welsh Government spokesman said: “The leaders of the devolved administrations and Michael Gove met this evening to discuss the arrangements over the Christmas period.

“They will reconvene tomorrow to confirm the position.”

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The meeting took place after two leading medical journals warned that a lessening of restrictions would “cost many lives”.

the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and Health Service Journal (HSJ) published a rare joint editorial calling for the “rash” decision to relax social distancing measures over the festive period to be scrapped.

They said government “is about to blunder into another major error that will cost many lives”.

The joint editorial warning, authored by HSJ editor Alastair McLellan and BMJ editor-in-chief Fiona Godlee, noted that when government devised the Christmas plan “the Covid-19 demand on the NHS would be decreasing”.

“But it is not, it is rising, and the emergence of a new strain of the virus has introduced further potential jeopardy,” they added.

“Members of the public can and should mitigate the impact of the third wave by being as careful as possible over the next few months. But many will see the lifting of restrictions over Christmas as permission to drop their guard.

“The [UK] government was too slow to introduce restrictions in the spring and again in the autumn.

“It should now reverse its rash decision to allow household mixing and instead extend the tiers over the five-day Christmas period in order to bring numbers down in the advance of a likely third wave.”

In response to suggestions that the Christmas arrangements could be restricted to three days or two households, the prime minister’s official spokesman said: “We have set out the guidance for the Christmas bubbling arrangements.

“But… we obviously keep all advice under constant review.”

Additional reporting by Press Association.