The Welsh Government's top scientific advisors have given a stark warning about the dangers of easing lockdown.
Wales could experience an "exponential growth" of coronavirus cases should lockdown restrictions be eased too quickly, the nation's Technical Advisory Cell has told ministers.
In a report dated February 7, which has just been published, the Technical Advisory Cell (TAC), states that "continued vigilance" is required to ensure we remain on "an improving trajectory".
Latest Public Health Wales figures show that the seven-day infection rate is down to 107.4 cases per 100,000 population, a huge drop on the 650 cases per 100,00 seen in December.
The testing positivity rate is also down to 9.1% which is below a key Welsh Government threshold for easing lockdown restrictions.
But the TAC warns that easing restrictions too early or too quickly could result in Wales returning to these high winter peaks and NHS hospitals once again seeing record numbers of Covid patients.
"It is likely that the current restrictions in Wales and the good adherence to them is reducing the size of the Covid-19 epidemic in Wales," the report states.
"These reductions are from exceptionally high peaks of infections and hospitalisations, and the NHS still remains under significant pressure. Continued vigilance is required to ensure we remain on an improving trajectory and avoid a return to exponential growth.
"Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) have modelled the likely progress of the epidemic if restrictions are lifted too early or too quickly and found that there is high likelihood of returning to current levels of infections and hospitalisations in those scenarios."
The TAC report said that the number of people with confirmed Covid-19 in hospital has decreased over recent weeks, but remains high and above the April peak.
It added that the best way to reduce the likelihood of new variants, such as the Kent and South African mutations, emerging is by keeping the number of infections low.
To date, 13 cases of the South Africa variant have been identified in Wales. Multi-agency investigations continue into two separate cases that do not have clear links to international travel.
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The Welsh Government has confirmed that children in foundation phase will return to schools and face-to-face learning after the half-term break.
Health Minister Vaughan Gething said: "That in itself will be a big deal for lots of people in and around education. We will be able to monitor the impact of that and we will be able to make different choices as we move forward.
"We need some certainty rather than speculation. We will deal with schools first, that is the first place to spend our headroom. We will then consider other areas, but in a staged and properly cautious way, that won’t throw away the hard won progress that all of us have worked hard in delivering."
