FIRST Minister Mark Drakeford has said there are no imminent plans for a lockdown in Wales, but warned that "nothing can be ruled out."

Mr Drakeford held a press conference as a new Bill was presented to Parliament this morning which would grant the devolved governments greater emergency powers to help limit the impact of the coronavirus outbreak.

"There are no imminent plans for a lockdown," he said. "The actions we have already taken are the ones that have been recommended to us and were discussed again yesterday at the COBRA meeting.

"The Prime Minister said yesterday that nothing can be ruled out, because there may be a need for further measures to flatten the curve of this disease to make its progress more manageable for the health service.

"But there was no discussion yesterday and there are no imminent plans for lockdown."

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"The discussion around London where the disease is a couple of weeks ahead of where it is in the rest of the United Kingdom, it is about trying to flatten the upswing of the disease so that the health service is better able to deal with the number of people coming through their doors.

"The calculation that is being made at the scientific committee is how fast is that curve, how soon will that hit the capacity that the health service has and what measures are needed to depress the curve.

"The measures that have been taken already are the measures we are told will have the greatest impact on stopping the rapid rise of the disease that might otherwise have taken place.

"It was part of the decision about school closures yesterday.

"I echo what the Prime Minister said, none of this means that further measures have been ruled out should the evidence from the experts tell us we need to do even more to keep the progress of the disease down so that the health service is able to cope with it."

Mr Drakeford explained the powers the new Bill would give Ministers in Wales should it receive royal assent.

"The Bill responds to the unprecedented difficulties that we face, and is based on the need to reduce the rise in coronavirus and to free up public services from some of the more normal requirements so they can be doing more on the front line," he said.

"The Bill contains new powers for Welsh ministers in devolved areas.

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"In some cases these powers are of an order that would not normally be seen in peacetime. There are powers for isolation and detention.

"The Bill will provide power for Ministers to take or keep people in quarantine or to direct a person to attend a designated place, or to comply with any reasonable precautions, such as mode of transport.

"I want to be clear, these are not powers that will be used from the start of the Bill’s royal assent. These are powers to be used if we reach a point where such draconian interventions in the lives of individuals are necessary.

"The bulk of the Bill is not about powers of that draconian sort. The bulk of the bill is about making the system we currently have, and the resources we currently have, be freed up to be able to respond more rapidly and more flexibly to more urgent needs."

This includes the powers to redeploy teachers to address staff shortages in schools when they reopen, making changes to DBS in the health and social care industry - where a recent DBS check in one sector can be used in another sector rather than having to go through another check, and changes to the Mental Health Act of 1983 so that the number of people you need to make decisions can be slimmed down so that people can be released and be doing more urgent work.

The First Minister also reiterated the advice given to the public to help stem the spread of the disease.

"I think there are clear signs that the public are hearing these messages," he said. "But not everybody is, and I think it is really important that we go on making it clear to people that this is a genuinely serious position and that everybody has responsibilities that they need to exercise as well as what public services can do and as well as the actions which government can take, individuals have act responsibly as well.

"The advice is very clear and very simple: don’t go to places that you don’t need to go to; don’t mix with other people where that is not necessary; and take those simple precautions that will keep you and other people safe."