The Lockdown Continues

We are still in lockdown here in Wales but some aspects of the restrictions have been relaxed today.

• We can now meet people from other households – as long as it is people from one single household, it is outside and we stick to the 2m social distancing rule.
• We can now drive locally to meet these people from another household.

Local is considered to be 5 miles, but there are exceptions to this if you need to drive further to:

• obtain supplies and services for you or your household, for example food, medicine, veterinary care and essential household maintenance
• visit health services that are not available locally
• provide care for or to help someone who needs it, such as an older person, a child or a vulnerable adult, though you should consider whether there are alternative sources of support available
• help the NHS by donating blood
• avoid injury or illness, or escape a risk of harm

You should not leave your local area to do anything that you could reasonably be expected to do locally. Most people in Wales live within five miles of shops and services that are essential for everyday purposes.

For those living rurally, the Welsh Government says: “We recognise that in rural areas these services may well be spread over a wider geographical area, and this means you can travel further to do the same sorts of things you could do within five miles elsewhere.”

I’m pleased to say that the beaches here were still fairly quiet over the weekend. There were more people than there has been and there were cars parked along the road so clearly some people were driving to get here even though they shouldn’t have been, but most people seem to be adhering to the rules by staying home, staying local and staying safe.

The police were out at Ynyslas giving out tickets and fining people over the weekend as well which may have helped. Apparently they gave out 13 penalty notices to people who had travelled here to go to the beach.

The rules for those people who should be shielding (which includes Anna) has changed now as well. This wasn’t the case when the new rules were first announced on Friday but it has been updated over the weekend. Now, those 130,000 or so people in Wales who are considered most at risk from coronavirus and had been asked not to leave the house at all until at least the middle of June have been told that they can go outside.

Obviously, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The virus is still out there and it is still killing people so the more you can isolate, socially distance and keep away from others the better. We’ll be continuing in just the same way as we have. If anything, the fact that there will be more people travelling here will probably mean that we’ll end up staying away from them even more.

Tags: Coronavirus