A two-week covid lockdown will be imposed in Wales from 6pm on Friday.
Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford told a told a press conference in Cardiff that a “sharp and deep” lockdown will begin at 6pm on October 23 and last until November 9, with everyone in Wales “required to stay at home”.
Drakeford said: “The only exceptions will be critical workers and jobs where working from home is not possible.”
He said the measure was necessary to reduce the spread of coronavirus and prevent the NHS from becoming overwhelmed.
Already about 2.3 million people in Wales are living under local lockdown rules.
Northern Ireland has undertaken a four-week lockdown with pubs and restaurants closed and schools to shut for two weeks, one of which is the mid-term break.
And five health board areas in Scotland are living under heavy restrictions which include the closure of pubs and restaurants.
The Welsh move comes as Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham continued his stand-off with Downing Street over plans to move the area into tier-three lockdown which would see the hospitality sector close.
Although government officials said a deal was in reach with more money on offer to compensate businesses and workers Burnham said an agreement was “not about the size of the cheque”.
He told Sky News: “It’s about protecting low-paid workers, people who are self-employed, supporting businesses and preventing them from collapsing. That’s what this is about.”
“We’ve always said we would put people’s health first, and we will do that. But health is about more than controlling the virus – people’s mental health, I think, is now pretty low given that we’ve been under restrictions here for three months already.”
The Labour-led Welsh government has also banned people from travelling into Wales from tier 2 and tier 3 areas in other parts of the UK.
Police in Gwent, south-east Wales, said they stopped people hundreds of people suspected of breaking the Welsh government’s travel ban over the weekend.
In Downing Street the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: “We have worked closely with the devolved administration’s every step of the pandemic response and will continue to do so. Actually there are more similarities in our approaches, than there are differences. But in terms of the measures that we have in place in England, the Prime Minister continues to believe that targeted local action in those areas of high prevalence of the virus is the correct course.”
