A Welsh intensive care doctor who has been at the heart of the pandemic for the past year has said she has difficulty seeing the end in sight while treating critically ill patients.
Infections rates are falling significantly and on Monday Public Health Wales reported no Covid related deaths for the first time since October 5, last year.
But Dr Ami Jones, who works at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, said while it was encouraging to see community transmissions falling, she was still seeing four or five new intensive care patients on some days.
"It is great that we have had a day where no-one has died," she told the BBC. "But I mean we might have three or four tomorrow, or even more than that.
"I think it is difficult while we have still got patients hitting the ITU to think that the end is in sight. We've had a couple of periods where we've had at little run of days where we've we not had any Covid patients in, and I thought 'Oh maybe the end really is in sight'.
"And then I turned back up at work this morning and we have got four or five new ITU patients with Covid, so it is hard to see anything more as a glitch in the data, to be honest.
"The numbers have been coming down day on day, and most importantly the numbers of community transmissions have been going down day on day, and that is the important thing, I think."
The latest figures from Public Health Wales show the infection rate across Wales is now 45 cases per 100,000 of population based on the seven days up to March 3, a drop on a figure of 46 reported on Sunday and now well below the 50 cases figure the Welsh Government had previously highlighted as key benchmark in its lockdown planning.
The percentage of tests coming back with positive results is also continuing to fall and is now below the key 5% benchmark at 4.8% in the last seven days. Cases for your area are here.
Dr Jones added: "We need to see the infection levels in the community are dropping right down to give us any hope of thinking we're on our way out of this."
