Latest ONS figures show prevalence of virus in England at highest level since start of year; Russia reports 1,163 new Covid deaths
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Bulgaria has recorded another 5,178 new Covid cases in the last 24 hours. Official data shows that there are 7,553 patients in hospital, 656 of them being in intensive care.
Yesterday a meeting of health authorities agreed to transform Lozenets Hospital in Sofia into an intensive care centre for Covid-19 treatment. Deputy health minister Dimitar Petrov said the government’s intention was to open 30 new beds every 3-4 days in the next two weeks. In addition, students will not be returning to in-person classes next week, with primary school pupils expected to be back at school on 8 November.
The truth of the matter is we wish the UK Government took a more precautionary approach to international travel. But when they choose to change the rules in England, in any practical sense it’s impossible for us to do anything different in Wales, because almost everybody from Wales who travels abroad or who returns to this country from abroad comes in through English ports and airports, and then travels on to Wales. So in a practical sense, we can’t make anything different happen there, although we wish the UK Government took a different approach. What we can do, when we can do things differently, when we have decisions that we can make effectively in Wales, then we take them.
We do have opportunities to discuss this with the UK Government. I have for a number of weeks been urging them to move to Plan B. It would certainly help us here in Wales to have a single communication that says across England and Wales we are all taking this virus as seriously as we need to take it as we go into the autumn and the winter.
