Wales' Covid-19 daily testing capacity set to increase

Mark Drakeford: "My officials are confident that those plans to go from 9,400 to 19,000 does stand up to examination"

Wales will not be in a position to regularly use all of its Covid-19 testing capacity "for a while", according to the first minister.

Mark Drakeford said more than 15,000 daily tests could be used on "an extraordinary day" but not currently on a day-to-day basis.

He also said the number of tests used in Wales through a UK government system will rise to 19,000 daily by November.

But Lighthouse Labs - where most Welsh samples are sent - have had backlogs.

It has meant many people have been unable to access tests close to home.

A Lighthouse Lab in Newport was meant to be up and running in August but its opening has been delayed until next month.

Asked on the BBC Politics Wales programme if he had confidence in the Lighthouse Labs system, the first minister said: "It was doing very well until about four weeks ago and it's now had a difficult period.

"My officials are confident that those plans to go from 9,400 to 19,000 does stand up to examination and we need to maximise the draw-down of the Lighthouse Labs to match our own capacity."

• How many people have died with Covid-19 in Wales?

• Speed of home test results drops again

• What do the latest lockdown rules mean?

Separately, the Welsh Government has said for months that Welsh NHS labs have the capacity to process 15,167 daily Covid-19 tests.

But Mr Drakeford conceded that it was only possible to use the whole capacity "if we had an extraordinary day where we did absolutely everything and threw every bit of capacity that we have at it".

He said: "The total capacity is 15,000 but that's not a sustainable day-by-day target.

"We won't be in that sustainable position for a while. We've been doing sustainably between 2,500 and 3,000 tests a day from Welsh capacity.

"We'll be over 5,000 next week, we'll be up to 8,000 a week or two after that, and then we will see what we need to do to go beyond that again," he added.

Barry Island is one of the major tourist attractions in the Vale of Glamorgan due to go into lockdown

Local restrictions will be imposed on Cardiff and Swansea from 18:00 BST, along with other areas already in lockdown.

Neath Port Talbot, Torfaen and Vale of Glamorgan will also see tighter Covid-19 restrictions from 18:00 on Monday.

The Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru have called for restrictions to be introduced on a more hyper-local basis.

Mr Drakeford said the Welsh Government would implement hyper-local restrictions if they thought it would be effective.

He said that "very, very local measures... can just displace some of the difficulties into neighbouring streets or wards and the virus itself is no respecter of any administrative boundaries".

Last week, Health Minister Vaughan Gething said Wales could face a national lockdown within seven weeks unless people's behaviour changed.

But Mr Drakeford acknowledged there could be no Wales-wide lockdown without the Treasury's financial support.

He added: "The first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon wrote to the prime minister at the end of last week calling for another [UK government emergency] Cobra meeting this coming week to discuss exactly that issue.

"I know that she has a set of measures that she is contemplating and needs to know the Treasury will not stand in her way.

"It just makes it more difficult to do the right thing."