THE coronavirus pandemic in Wales is beginning to shrink, as the R rate across the country drops below one.

The nation's R rate is now between 0.7 and 0.9, following almost six weeks of lockdown.

A rate of below one shows that the pandemic is shrinking, while anything over one shows the pandemic to be worsening.

Dr Frank Atherton, chief medical officer for Wales, spoke at today's Welsh Government briefing, highlighting the "good progress" that was being made.

He said: "In Wales we are starting to see the beginning of an improvement in the community transmission of coronavirus.

"We are seeing cases steadily falling in the community and the seven day case rate has been dropping for the past few days. It is about a third of where we were in the two weeks before Christmas.

"The good news also is that it is falling in all parts of Wales.

"We have also seen that the case positivity rate, the number of tests which return a positive outcome, has been reducing and is about 14 per cent at the moment.

"And we believe that the R number in Wales is less than one which means the epidemic is shrinking rather than growing.

"That is thanks to the lockdown and to everybody who is following those rules and that is what is keeping us safe and saving lives."

On Friday, first minister Mark Drakeford will announce the outcome of the latest three-week review into coronavirus restrictions in Wales.

Dr Atherton was asked where case rates would need to get to in order for some restrictions to be eased.

The chief medical officer said it was a "complex equation" and relied on a mixture of three things.

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He said: "There is no absolute number that I would point to when we can start to reopen.

"We need to look at three things, the community transmission rate, the NHS capacity and the percentage of people who are vaccinated.

"What I would say, and do say to the first minister and health minister, is we need to learn from what has happened when it we came out of previous lockdowns.

"What we saw was that even though rates came down quite well, when we released it, we did so in a way that allowed the virus to re-establish itself very quickly.

"As we do get more headroom what we need to do is release things very cautiously."