Covid booster jabs will be not be administered in Wales on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, it has been has confirmed.
The Welsh Government said the service will resume on Monday, December 27, but in England the rollout will continue over both days.
By this point Wales will be under tougher restrictions as part of the plan to tackle the new and highly-transmissible Omicron variant.
Read more: The full list of Alert Level 2 Covid rules coming into force in Wales after Christmas
The aim in Wales is for all eligible adults to be offered the booster by the end of December to offer greater protection against the mutant strain.
To date 1,490,668 people have been given their booster jab in Wales. On Tuesday, December 21 a record 50,524 jabs were given in a single day.
The Welsh government said the decision to pause the vaccination programme over Christmas was made by health boards. The move was backed by Cardiff University virologist Dr Richard Stanton, who said most people would rather spend the day with their families rather than going out to get a booster and it would be hard to find staff to man vaccine centres. The British Medical Association in Wales also said the two day pause was not a concern.
Welsh Conservative Shadow Health Minister, Russell George MS, said it "did not make sense" to halt boosters on Boxing Day and warned the decision will be met with "much bemusement" by families and businesses across Wales.
He said: "We've always known that vaccination, not restriction, will defeat the pandemic. This remains the case and vaccination should always be the top priority for the Labour Government - even on Boxing Day."
Uptake of booster vaccines (according to PHW):
- Care home residents: 86.9%
- Care home workers: 71.5%
- 80 years and older: 85.9%
- Healthcare workers: 81.6%
- Social care workers: 37,888
- 75-79 years: 88.2%
- 70-74 years: 88%
- Clinically extremely vulnerable 16-69 years: 52.3%
- 65-69 years: 85.5%
- Clinical risk groups 12-64 years: 65.7%
- 60-64 years: 79%
- 55-59 years: 72.6%
- 50-54 years: 65.8%
- 40-49 years: 49.9%
- 30-39 years: 30.8%
- 18-29 years: 20.9%
- 16-17 years: 6.2%
On Christmas Eve, Public Health Wales confirmed 6,755 more positive cases of coronavirus in the 24 hours up to 9am on December 23 - the most in a single day since the start of the pandemic.
Wales' seven-day infection rate continues to climb and now stands at 662.3 cases per 100,000 population. Some parts of the country, including the local authorities of Anglesey and Cardiff, have seen huge rises and could see their infection rate soar past 1,000 cases per 100,000 in the coming days.
The Welsh Government had said the new restrictions, due to come in on Boxing Day, are needed because of the pace at which Omicron is spreading which could lead to more people catching it and ending up in hospital.
However, a study from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) shows that people with the strain are 50% to 70% less likely to need hospital care compared with previous variants.
Dr Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UKHSA, said: "Our latest analysis shows an encouraging early signal that people who contract the Omicron variant may be at a relatively lower risk of hospitalisation than those who contract other variants.
"Cases are currently very high in the UK, and even a relatively low proportion requiring hospitalisation could result in a significant number of people becoming seriously ill."
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