THE UK Government’s plan to scrap coronavirus rules in England on June 21 was not “sensible”, Wales’s economy minister Vaughan Gething has said.

Mr Gething said Wales’s plan was to be guided by “data, not dates” and that the so-called Delta variant meant the Welsh Government had to take a phased approach to lifting restrictions.

Speaking ahead of Boris Johnson’s announcement of an expected four-week delay to the final lifting of lockdown restrictions in England, Mr Gething said Welsh ministers had no plans to indicate a date for ending measures in Wales.

He told a press briefing in Cardiff: “We have always said that trying to set out commitments to an irreversible road to freedom, an irreversible move in one direction when we know that the pandemic has caused different unpleasant surprises at various points was not something that we thought was sensible.

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“So we’ll carry on with the approach we’ve taken here in Wales. We’ve generally been guided by the data and evidence, so data, not dates, and we hope that’ll provide as much certainty as we can for people in Wales.”

There are now 315 cases of the Delta variant identified in Wales, with Public Health Wales also announcing it was now the most common variant in new cases following a rise of 131 cases since Thursday.

The majority of new cases are not connected to international travel and are instead due to person-to-person transmissions in the community, believed to be caused by increased mixing.

Most of the cases in Wales are focused around a cluster in both North and South Wales, but unlinked cases were starting to appear in these areas and elsewhere in Wales.

Mr Gething said the increasing numbers of variant infections meant the Welsh Government had to take a phased approach to lifting restrictions.

“We are relaxing restrictions around outdoor events and activities first because the evidence continues to suggest the risk of infection is significantly lower outdoors compared to indoors,” he said.

“While this is absolutely the right decision for Wales, we recognise the impact it will have on a significant number of businesses, particularly wedding venues and indoor attractions.”

Mr Gething said the Welsh Government would put further funding in place for businesses “materially affected” by the phased move to Alert Level One.

Eligible businesses such as indoor attractions and wedding venues will be entitled to an additional payment of between £875 and £5,000 depending on their “size and circumstances”, he added.

But Mr Gething said any phasing out of current furlough arrangements will cause all businesses to “make choices” such as whether to continue operating and how many staff they employ.

He said that delaying the easing of restrictions in England for four weeks may have a “material impact on the world of business” in Wales, and said he wanted the UK Government to supply “the most generous package of support available for Welsh jobs and businesses”.

“We know that at some point furlough will come to an end and it’s been a big success in maintaining jobs and businesses but we don’t want to have a cliff-edge approach that doesn’t take account of the reality of the pandemic, and the trading conditions that will face businesses in Wales, and indeed across the rest of the UK,” Mr Gething said.

“I do think it would be helpful and sensible to reconsider and potentially to improve the support available if England does delay matters by a further month because of the impact of the Delta variant in particular.”

Meanwhile, all eligible adults in Wales have been offered their first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine – representing 70.3 per cent of the population – with the country still leading the world in terms of first jabs given out.

In Wales, 1.4 million people have received both jabs, equivalent to 54.9% of the country’s adult population.

The incidence rate in Wales is now 18.1 cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 people – the lowest rate of the UK nations – and Mr Gething said the vaccination programme was making “excellent progress”.