THERE have been no new coronavirus deaths reported in Gwent for a week, according to Public Health Wales. 

The last time a new death was reported in the Aneuirn Bevan Health Board area was Sunday, May 31. 

Today, June 7, five new confirmed cases have been reported in Gwent.

Four of the new cases are in Newport, out of 113 testing episodes.

The other case is in Monmouthshire, where 42 tests took place.

There are no new cases in Torfaen, Caerphilly or Blaenau Gwent.

Across Wales, there are forty new cases of Covid-19.

The biggest rise was in Cardiff and Rhondda Cynon Taf, with each local authority seeing seven new cases each.

Five more people have died after contracting the disease in Wales.

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It comes as Health Secretary Matt Hancock has insisted the Government made the “right decisions at the right time” with the coronavirus lockdown, despite a leading scientist saying lives would have been saved had ministers acted sooner.

The Health Secretary disagreed with the comments by infectious diseases expert Professor John Edmunds, who suggested the UK should have imposed restrictions in early March – although he admitted it would have been “very hard to pull the trigger at that point”.

Prof Edmunds, who attends meetings of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We should have gone into lockdown earlier.

“I think it would have been hard to do it, I think the data that we were dealing with in the early part of March and our kind of situational awareness was really quite poor.

“And so I think it would have been very hard to pull the trigger at that point but I wish we had – I wish we had gone into lockdown earlier. I think that has cost a lot of lives unfortunately.”

Asked if he agreed with the professor’s comments, Mr Hancock later replied: “No. I think we took the right decisions at the right time.

“And there’s a broad range on Sage of scientific opinion, and we were guided by the science – which means guided by the balance of that opinion – as expressed to ministers through the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser.

“That’s the right way for it to have been done.”