Here are the coronavirus morning headlines for Tuesday, January 11, as the health minister is set to give the latest update on the wave of Omicron cases in Wales.
Eluned Morgan will be speaking at lunchtime as it was announced that a further £12.5 million has been made available to help the NHS recovery in Wales, alleviate waiting times and reduce "extremely challenging" winter pressures.
She has said the extra money will be spent on supporting people out of hospitals and into independent living, and pharmacies so they can help more people stay well without needing to see a GP.
Read more: Two top doctors explain what's really happening with Covid in Welsh hospitals
Around £10 million of the pot will be distributed across the country's 22 local authorities to buy equipment such as flow mattresses, patient turning systems, stairlifts, hoists and telecare equipment for people's homes - allowing individuals to be discharged more quickly and freeing up hospital beds, it was revealed.
Pharmacies will get £2.5 million to improve access to treatment and advice for a range of common ailments, reducing pressures on GPs and other NHS services.
Baroness Morgan said: "The pressures on the health and social care system remains extremely challenging. We all need to work together to support our health and social care services and help us to help you this winter.
"Simple things like visiting local pharmacies or minor injuries units for advice on minor health concerns, checking symptoms online using the NHS 111 Wales website or getting a Covid vaccine can make a high difference to our NHS and help people look after their health this winter.
"The funding announced today will help tackle the hospital and work force pressures within community services and social care by avoiding unnecessary hospital admissions and supporting people who currently cannot be discharged from hospitals due to insufficient care capacity return home."
Pharmacies in Wales can currently offer advice and treatment for 26 agreed conditions including indigestion, chickenpox, acne, athletes foot, backache, diarrhoea and mouth ulcers.
It also comes the latest figures from Public Health Wales show that the infection rate has fallen for the second day.
The latest seven-day infection rate across Wales, based on the seven days up to January 5 is 1,997.1 - a significant drop on 2,214.6 recorded on Sunday. Cases for your area here.
Read more: All the latest coronavirus news here.
Police in contact with officials over claims of No10 lockdown drinks
The Metropolitan police have contacted Downing Street over ‘bring your own booze’ party. Staff were invited to a drinks party in the Number 10 garden during the first lockdown.
Following political calls for officers to investigate allegations relating to May 2020, the Metropolitan Police confirmed it is liaising with the Whitehall department over the latest claims.
Martin Reynolds, the Prime Minister's principal private secretary, sent an email to more than 100 Downing Street employees asking them to "bring your own booze" for an evening gathering, ITV reported.
Mr Reynolds said they should "make the most of the lovely weather", despite England being under tough coronavirus restrictions banning groups from meeting socially outdoors when the message was sent.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "The Metropolitan Police Service is aware of widespread reporting relating to alleged breaches of the Health Protection Regulations at Downing Street on May 20 2020 and is in contact with the Cabinet Office."
Multiple reports have suggested the Prime Minister attended the event with his wife, Carrie Johnson.
The Conservative Party leader sidestepped questions on Monday about whether he attended the evening gathering allegedly organised by Mr Reynolds.
The Metropolitan police had tweeted on the day the alleged "bring your own booze" event is said to have taken place, telling people they could have a picnic, exercise or do sport outside providing you are "on your own, with people you live with, or just you and one other person".
The-then culture secretary Oliver Dowden used a Downing Street press conference that day to remind the public they could "meet one person outside of your household in an outdoor, public place provided that you stay two metres apart".
No 10 said it would not be commenting on the allegations while Sue Gray, a senior civil servant, carries out her inquiry into numerous allegations of rule-breaking events being held in Downing Street during the coronavirus pandemic.
Downing Street denied reports that Mr Reynolds is to be moved to another post following the claims.
The Prime Minister's official spokesman said he was staying in his current role.
"The Prime Minister has full confidence in his team. There is no change in that post," he told reporters on Monday morning.
The spokesman also refused to be drawn on reports that Mr Johnson had attended the event.
"There is an independent process going on to look into this, led by Sue Gray, and I can't comment further while that is taking place."
Ms Gray, a Cabinet Office official, as well as looking into the May 20 2020 claims, has also expanded her investigation to look into a garden gathering that took place five days earlier, which was revealed by a leaked photo showing the Prime Minister and staff sat around a table with cheese and wine.
UK health chiefs say recommended isolation is one day shorter in US
Health officials have clarified that the recommended Covid self-isolation period in the US is shorter than in the UK, at a time when the Prime Minister is considering reducing it to five days.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) previously said the isolation period was effectively the same in both countries. Read more about UK Government wanting to cut Covid isolation period.
It said the recommended minimum of six full days in the UK was counted from the onset of symptoms, while in the US, the five-day isolation began from the day of a positive test, which could be several days after the first symptoms.
However, the UKHSA has updated its blog post, which now states: "In the UK our advice is to self-isolate for at least six full days from the point at which you have symptoms or get a positive test, whichever is first."
It continued: "In the United States, the advice is to isolate for at least five full days from the same point."
And the blog post concludes: "We believe that allowing people to leave self-isolation after two negative lateral flow tests on days six and seven is the optimal approach at present. This supports people who are unlikely to be infectious to go back to work and resume other activities, but continues to protect the wider population from infection.
The UKHSA said it made the correction after the US CDC health protection agency clarified that its isolation period started when symptoms first appeared.
The CDC cut the recommended isolation period there to five days in December.
Boris Johnson has been facing calls from MPs and business chiefs to follow suit in the UK in order to help ease staff absences across the economy and public services.
'Covid has made outlook worse for people with least survivable cancers'
The Covid pandemic has made the outlook worse for people with the least survivable cancers, such as pancreatic, stomach and brain cancer, campaigners have said.
A quarter of cancers in the UK have an average five-year survival rate of just 16% and are often diagnosed late in emergency departments.
The Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce (LSCT) has launched its first awareness day to ask for greater focus on early diagnosis and more research, as well as a Government commitment to increase survival rates for less survivable cancers to 28% by 2029.
It said data shows that around 3% of breast and 8% of prostate cancers are diagnosed in an emergency, but this jumps to 53% for pancreatic or central nervous system cancers including brain, 45% for liver, 35% for lung, 30% for stomach and 21% for oesophageal cancers.
Screening programmes for these less survivable cancers do not exist and many people are unaware of the symptoms.
LSCT chairwoman Anna Jewell said: "We know that delays in diagnosis lead to much poorer outcomes for patients with these rapidly-advancing cancers. The situation is critical and has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
"The taskforce is calling for a significant increase in research funding as well as a commitment to increasing resources for early diagnosis for less survivable cancers so we can close the deadly cancer gap."
Judi Rhys, chief executive of Tenovus Cancer Care in Wales, told BBC Wales: "What we're concerned about are the extremely poor outcomes of six cancers (lung, liver, brain, oesophageal, pancreatic and stomach)..
"We know in Wales around 4,400 people will have this cancer every year and unfortunately only 16% of those will survive for five years, so a really, really poor outcome."
She said the pandemic had affected the number of people seeking help as they did not want to bother the NHS - but she urged people to seek help even if they feel they have mild symptoms.
"We know far fewer people have turned up for diagnostic tests than before... symptoms for these cancers can be very vague, depending on which cancer it is... which people will put down to all sorts of things."
Italy imposes new restrictions on the unvaccinated amid Covid surge
Italy has targeted the unvaccinated with a host of new coronavirus restrictions, with proof of vaccination or recovery from a recent infection required to enter public transport, coffee shops, hotels, gyms and other everyday activities.
The new "super" health pass requirement, which eliminates the ability to show just a negative test to gain access to services, comes as many Italians return to work and school after the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
It came as Covid-19 infections are soaring past 100,000 per day in Italy.
The government has responded to the Omicron-fuelled wave of infections by passing new restrictions aimed at encouraging vaccine holdouts to get the jabs or be increasingly shut out of recreational and even essential activities, such as taking a bus or underground train to work.
Italians have by and large supported the restrictions, which in recent months have also included outdoor mask mandates and a standard health pass to get into workplaces.
Many welcomed the new restrictions, which were being enforced on Monday by police fanning out at train stations to check passengers' vaccine status and make sure they were wearing the more protective Ffp2 face masks, which were required on public transport as of Monday.
Premier Mario Draghi, though, has faced criticism for a related decision to mandate vaccinations for anyone 50 and over starting next month. Critics say the fine for noncompliance, which starts at 100 euros, makes the mandate toothless.
Italy has fully vaccinated 86% of the over-12 population, and nearly 75% of those who are eligible have received a booster.
But two million people out of Italy's population of 60 million are currently positive, impacting essential services.
School districts have complained they do not have enough teachers to reopen, since so many are positive or in quarantine. Some train services have been curtailed because of labour shortages.
Doctors' associations, meanwhile, have said the surge is hitting Italy's hospitals hard. Some 16,000 Covid-19 patients are in the hospital and 1,600 are in intensive care, but that is well short of the 4,000 people in intensive care units during the height of the first wave.
Officials say around two-thirds of those now admitted to hospital are unvaccinated.
Spanish Prime Minister floats different approach to dealing with Covid
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez says that amid falling death rates for Covid-19, Spain wants European officials to consider whether to move away from the detailed tracking that the pandemic has required until now to a flu-like monitoring system.
The change would mean treating Covid-19 as an "endemic illness" rather than a pandemic, Mr Sanchez said, adding that deaths as a proportion of recorded cases have fallen dramatically since the initial onset of the pandemic.
"I believe that we have the conditions for, with precaution, slowly, opening the debate at the technical level and at the level of health professionals, but also at the European level, to start evaluating the evolution of this disease with different parameters than we have until now," Mr Sanchez told Cadena SER radio.
The prime minister confirmed a report from the country's leading newspaper, El Pais, that under a new monitoring system already being drafted by Spanish health authorities every new infection would not need to be recorded and that people with symptoms would not necessarily be tested but they will continue to receive treatment.
The prime minister also announced that Spain is purchasing this month 344,000 pills of a Covid-19 antiviral drug developed by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Despite a successful vaccination rollout, Spain is grappling with an unprecedented surge of coronavirus infections.
Some eight million primary and secondary-level students were resuming classes on Monday after a long Christmas and New Year break.
Authorities have shortened isolation periods and softened the requirements for quarantining entire classrooms when outbreaks happen, to avoid major disruptions in schools.
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