People across Wales are eagerly anticipating the possibility of lockdown restrictions being eased as part of the Welsh Government's latest 21-day review.
First Minister Mark Drakeford has already confirmed that foundation phase primary school pupils - those aged between three and seven - are expected to return to class from Monday in most local authority areas. But he has hinted there could be a further, more minor, easing of the restrictions, the details of which will be unveiled first thing on Friday morning.
Wales remains in a level 4 lockdown which means non-essential retail and hospitality are closed, mixing between households is forbidden and travel restrictions remain in place.
However, the country has already dropped below many key indicators that determine whether the country should remain with these tough restrictions or drop to level 3, which would see a considerable relaxation of restrictions, including the opening of several venues like pubs, restaurants and cafes, as well as leisure and fitness facilities and non-essential retail.
Here's the current criteria for level 4:
- Confirmed case rate more than 300 cases per 100,000 people over a rolling seven-day average: Case rate is now well below that at 83.7 per 100,000
- Confirmed case rates for over 60s suggesting rapid growth: The case rate in this category is falling
- Projection of future case incidence rates over next two weeks anticipating significant rises to more than 500 cases per 100,000 people: The case rate shows no signs of rising currently
- Test positivity above 10% over seven days: It's now below this figure at 8%
- A reliable estimate of the R rate at one or above: The most recent estimate from Public Health Wales is that R is around 0.7
Health and social care under significant pressure and not sustainable, elective procedures are being cancelled across the board and capacity limits reached or about to be breached: This is still the case.
So Wales has dropped below a number of these key indicators, which might suggest that we are ready to move to alert level 3. However, the issue remains that Welsh NHS hospitals are extremely busy and critical care capacity is still above 100%.
But latest figures show that things are steadily improving on that front too, with the number of "confirmed" coronavirus patients taking up hospital beds down to half of the January peak.
There were 765 beds occupied with confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, February 16 - down from 1,643 seen in the peak on January 4.
And when it came to all coronavirus patients in hospital beds - those confirmed, suspected and recovering with the virus - the figure stood at 2,049 on February 16, representing 26% of all hospitalisations. That is a significant fall when compared to the January 12 peak of 2,879 and is a sizeable decrease on the 2,158 recorded the same day in the previous week.
Similarly, in critical care 79 invasive ventilated beds were occupied with coronavirus patients (confirmed, suspected and recovering) on February 16, which compares to 84 on the same day in the previous week and to 164 at the peak in April 2020.
This is all encouraging, but the demands on the NHS have been more severe in the second wave than the first. This has to be taken into account and no frontline clinician wants a third wave to hit our shores.
However, there is also some concern that the benchmarks the Welsh Government has set for easing restrictions could now be outdated due to the new strains of the virus.
The so-called Kent variant has become the most dominant strain in Wales and is understood to be more infectious than the original. There are also 17 confirmed cases of the South African variant.
Find out about coronavirus cases in your area:
Speaking about the South African strain, Dr Giri Shankar, incident director for Public Health Wales, said: "This is a small number of cases and there is no evidence at the moment that sustained community transmission has occurred.
"There is no evidence that the South African variant causes more serious illness; there is some evidence that it can spread more easily, and that vaccines - although still effective - may not work quite as well against it.
"Because of the emergence of new more transmissible variants, it is even more vital that we all keep to the lockdown restrictions and do not meet other people.
"This means that you must stay at home. If you must leave home keep your distance, wash your hands regularly, and wear a face mask when required according to the regulations."
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Health Minister Vaughan Gething said: "The First Minister has said we are looking at whether there are any other small changes we are able to make to give families a bit more flexibility after such a long lockdown."
