Thank you for joining us for our live coverage of the Welsh Government press conference on the pandemic.

Here are today's main points:

• A further 49 people have died with coronavirus in Wales, taking the official total to 4,610
• Almost 10% of Wales has now been vaccinated, with 312,305 people receiving their first dose
• The chief medical officer for Wales said the R rate for coronavirus transmission is now below 1 and the country is continuing to see "overall improvement"
• Dr Frank Atherton added that Wales is "on track" with vaccinations but it is "inevitable" that some under-80s will get the vaccines first
• He also said that an all-Wales approach is the "best hope" and that there was "no headroom" for lifting restrictions at the next review
• The new Kent variant is a "dominant strain" across Wales, according to the Welsh Government's chief scientific adviser for health, Dr Rob Orford
• He added that the "biggest worry" with new strains is the possibility they will not respond to vaccines and treatment

Thanks for joining us - have a good afternoon and stay safe.

The Royal Welsh Show - the biggest agricultural show in Europe - has been cancelled for the second year running because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

The board met on Wednesday to discuss holding the show as scheduled in July, but after discussions with Welsh Government decided it wouldn't be feasible.

Steve Hughson, chief executive of the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society, said: “We continue to work alongside the Welsh Government and Public Health Wales to create a road map for the safe re-opening of events.

"Our events are central to the rural economy and way of life and mean so much to members, exhibitors, traders and visitors.

"We fully understand the responsibility on all of us to ensure we deliver our events as soon as it is safe to do so."

Mr Hughson said the society had provided free facilities for a Covid testing centre and a mass vaccination centre at its showground in Llanelwedd, Powys.

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Image source, @PaulSalisbury15

A plant where doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine are produced and stored has been evacuated after receiving a suspicious package.

North Wales Police said a cordon had been put in place near the Wockhardt plant on the Wrexham Industrial Estate and the public had been asked to keep away.

Wockhardt UK said: "Upon expert advice we have partially evacuated the site pending a full investigation."

The BBC understands that the bomb disposal unit is on site.

There are no reports of any injuries.

Public Health Wales today reported that official death total had risen by 49, hospital patients with Covid-19 have fallen by 11 and those in critical care or ventilated have fallen by seven.

Wales now has a 14.2% positivity rate for coronavirus on testing.

Image source, HoC

The prime minister says the UK government has been "working flat out on the problem at the DVLA", after a high number of cases of Covid-19 amongst the workforce at the Swansea-based agency.

A coronavirus outbreak was declared at the centre in the Clase area of the city in December after 352 cases in the space of four months.

Swansea East MP Carolyn Harris called on Boris Johnson to take "full responsibility" for the "woeful and reckless management of the Covid outbreak at the DVLA government sites in my constituency".

During Prime Minister's Questions she also asked him to ensure that Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is "held accountable for the inexcusable damage and devastation this has caused".

Mr Johnson replied: "We have been working flat out on the problem at the DVLA - all staff who can work from home are doing so.

"Measures have been taken to minimise the number of people on the site at any one time, and more than 2,000 tests have been carried out by the DVLA in the last fortnight alone, with all results so far coming back negative."

The new, dominant variant of Covid-19 in the UK doesn’t appear to have any more impact on young and healthy people than the original strain, according to the Welsh Government’s chief scientific adviser for Health.

Dr Rob Orford said that the so-called Kent variant was being closely monitored.

“It doesn’t seem to have any difference in the way it infects people across the ages, which is really positive”, he said.

"Wherever there is an opportunity to mix there will be transmission, so we need to be very careful about how we open up.

Dr Orford added: “Of course we’re looking at the other variants - the two from Brazil and the one from South Africa - very closely and are asking the same question.

“As always the more data we’ve got, the more confident we can be in how we react to that, how we assess and how we respond to them."

The chief medical officer for Wales said there is "no headroom" for easing Covid restrictions.

On Friday, First Minister Mark Drakeford is due to set out what restrictions will be in place for the next three weeks.

However, speaking at today's Welsh Government briefing, Dr Frank Atheron said the February review in three weeks' time will be the one "to think about further relaxations".

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An all-Wales approach remains the “best hope” option for tackling the pandemic, according to Wales’ chief medical officer.

Dr Frank Atherton’s comments came after he was asked whether local lockdowns could be reintroduced instead national restrictions.

“My personal view is that we're better sticking with a Wales-wide approach,” Dr Atherton said.

He added that a lot had been learnt from the local restrictions introduced in several areas last year.

“One thing we did learn is that things move very quickly around the country.

“We've talked before about whether we should have a north and a south division, and we've seen the virus move very quickly from the south of Wales up to the north of Wales.

“I think it moves so quickly that an all-Wales approach to my mind remains the best hope for us.”

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It is "inevitable" that some people aged under 80 will be invited for Covid-19 vaccinations before those over-80s in some parts of Wales have received the jab, Wales' chief medical officer said.

Dr Frank Atherton said he expected to see "a bit of variation between health boards" due to the "scale" and "complexity" of the vaccination programme.

"The health boards are all absolutely clear about who the priority groups are," he said.

"Inevitably some over-70s will start to be invited in some health boards before all the over-80s are covered.

"But we're well on track to get through those first."

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Wales remains “on track” to offer first doses of Covid-19 vaccinations to all of the Welsh Government’s top four priority groups by the middle of February, according to the chief medical officer.

Dr Frank Atherton said that despite the initial target of offering vaccines to 70 per cent of people aged over 80 by last weekend being missed, good progress was still being made.

“We currently have around 52 per cent of the over-80s vaccinated”, he said.

"But within that other group, people living in care homes and people who are working in care homes – over seventy per cent of those have now been vaccinated.

“We’re making solid progress on those, and the intention still remains to get through all those first priority groups by the middle of February and we believe we’re on track for that."

Dr Atherton also insisted the aim of offering vaccinations to seven in every ten people over the age of 80 by last Sunday "was never a target”.

The “biggest worry” with the new Covid variants is that they will not respond to treatments or vaccines, according to the Welsh Government’s chief scientific adviser on health.

Dr Rob Orford told Wednesday's press conference that the new variants posed new challenges because of their potential to alter the course of the pandemic by speeding up the rate of transmission and quickly increasing the number of people infected.

He added: “The biggest worry, of course, is that a new variant could emerge which won’t respond to our treatments or vaccines – putting us back to square one again”.

A new variant of coronavirus, known as the Kent variant, is the dominant strain across Wales, according to the Welsh Government’s chief scientific adviser for health.

Dr Rob Orford said this strain is more contagious than the form of the virus previously circulating in Wales.

“It is now present in all parts of Wales with levels of at least 50% or more. It is highest in north Wales," he said.

Dr Orford that despite reports that the Kent strain was more deadly, studies of death rates "have not been able to say that definitively”.

He said the new strain was more contagious and travelled very quickly.

Dr Orford said three other new variants were being tracked – ones which had emerged in South Africa and Brazil.

He said there had been 10 cases of the South African variant identified in Wales, all of which were "imported cases from people who have travelled abroad”.

The Welsh Government’s chief medical officer has confirmed that more than 312,000 people in Wales have had their first dose of the vaccine.

“That’s a shade under 10% of our population," Dr Frank Atherton said at Wednesday's Welsh Government press conference.

“This is real progress”.

Dr Atherton added that the Welsh Government was on course for the “first milestone” of offering vaccines to the first four priority groups by mid-February.

Wales' R rate of transmission is now below one, but "we are not out of the woods", according to the chief medical officer for Wales.

Dr Frank Atherton said the country is “beginning to see an overall improvement” and that cases had been falling steadily since earlier this month.

“The seven-day case rate for Wales is currently around 200 cases per 100,000 people," he told today's press briefing.

“This is significantly lower than the very high rates of 650 cases per 100,000 people that we were seeing in the weeks before Christmas.

“The good news is that it’s falling in all parts of Wales.

“We believe the R number is below 1 – at between 0.7 and 0.9.

“All this tells us that transmission of the infection is slowing and the size of the current outbreak is shrinking."

The boss of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in Swansea has been accused by a senior MP of giving "misleading" information about Covid-19 cases amongst workers.

Giving evidence to the Commons Transport Committee, chief executive Julie Lennard said of 546 cases at its Swansea office since March, 535 were between September and December.

Committee chairman Huw Merriman MP said the DVLA previously indicated cases were spread out over the who period since March.

Ministers were urged to intervene after staff were said to be too scared to go to work.

Mr Merriman said: "If I had a grand total of 546 [cases], and 535 of those were from September, I wouldn't write a letter and point it to my attention that it was a cumulative number stretching back from March, when March to September is a grand total of 11.

"I found it rather misleading."

Ms Lennard apologised if it was misleading and said in the haste to get information together ahead of the meeting "things could have been clearer".

An outbreak had been declared in December, but the DVLA insisted safety was a priority and that it followed guidance to "help keep our offices Covid secure".

Image source, Zweifel

Chief Medical Officer Dr Frank Atherton and Chief Scientific Adviser for Health Dr Rob Orford are about to give a Welsh Government update on the pandemic.

You can watch proceedings live on BBC One Wales, on the BBC iPlayer, on S4C, or via the Coronavirus Update video link above.

Wrexham has the highest rolling seven-day case rate in Wales with 503.1 people per 100,000 population testing positive.

That is followed by neighbouring Flintshire with 384.4 and Denbighshire with 263.3.

Ceredigion has the lowest case rate at 86.7 per 100,000 people, followed by Conwy with 127.1.

The Wales average is 204 per 100,000.

On Wednesday, a further 49 deaths in Wales of people with coronavirus were reported by Public Heath Wales.

Of those, there were 11 in both the Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board area and Cardiff and Vale.

Ten were in Betsi Cadwaladr in north Wales and nine were in Aneurin Bevan in south east Wales.

Swansea Bay reported six, Hywel Dda in west Wales reported three, and one death was from a resident outside of Wales.

A total of 312,305 people have now received a Covid vaccination in Wales, Public Health Wales said.

It is an increase of 22,749 on yesterday's running total.

Of these, 639 people have now received their second dose.

This means 9.9 per cent of the total population of Wales have been vaccinated.

It comes as the Welsh Government blamed bad weather for not reaching their target of 70% of all over-80s getting the vaccine by last weekend.

Image source, Getty Images

A further 49 people have died with coronavirus in Wales, according to Public Health Wales.

This takes the official death total in the pandemic to 4,610.

There were 537 new reports of the virus today, taking the number of cases to 189,689.

Nearly 2.4 million tests have now been carried out in Wales.

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