ANY lifting of lockdown measures next week will be "very modest", first minister Mark Drakeford has said.

Mr Drakeford said the presence of the new variants, and with the Kent variant now the dominant strain in Wales, meant a cautious approach to lifting lockdown was needed.

"What we will rely on will be the positive way in which people in Wales last year supported the careful step-by-step approach we took to lifting restrictions," he said.

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"The anxiety that our scientists point to is that we now have the Kent variant as the dominant variant of this virus in Wales and its transmissibility is much quicker than the original version.

"As we start carefully and cautiously to lift restrictions, we don't know how this new variant will react, whether even a small uptick in the number of infections might accelerate away from us even more quickly than would have been the case last year, and that's why they urge caution on us.

"I hope when I'm standing here next week I'll be confirming that the foundation phase are going back to school and if there's anything else – and if there is anything else it will be very modest indeed – that we can do, we will monitor that as carefully as we possibly can to see whether the conditions of the new variant give us cause for concern. That's the balancing act, and I think people will understand that.

"Nobody will want us to throw away all the efforts people have made since before Christmas and we will not do that.

"We will look to restore freedoms in a way that continues to secure our safety against coronavirus and its latest developments while always wanting - as safely as we can - to restore the freedoms that we have all been missing."