At today's Coronavirus press briefing, health minister Vaughan Gething announced an extra £60m of funding to extend the Test Trace Protect system in Cowbridge, and across the country.

Mr Gething began the conference by confirming that a review of the country's restrictions will take place this week, with an announcement on Friday.

He said this was the start of the process of relaxing the restrictions, but warned the process could not be rushed, saying "we can't open everything at once."

The health minister went on to announce extra funding to extend Wales' contact tracing system until September.

"It has played a pivotal role in helping to protect everyone in Wales since its launch last June.

"We've carried out more than 2.8m tests since the start of the pandemic and there have been more than 205,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus. More than 167,000 people who tested positive have been contacted by TTP.

"Today, I am announcing an extra £60m to extend our successful contact tracing system to the end of September."

The contact tracing is a public service run by people familiar with the local area and a team of 2,000 contract tracers and advisers work across Wales.

Since June, they have reached 99.6% of people who have tested positive for coronavirus and were eligible for follow-up. They have also successfully reached 95% of their close contacts and advised them about self-isolating.

The funding will also support the continued improvement of the contact tracing digital system.

Vaccinating homeless people

The health minister also confirmed that all people experiencing homelessness will be included in group six of the vaccination programme.

"This includes people who are sleeping rough, people in emergency accommodation and people who were recently homeless but are now in supported accommodation," said Mr Gething.

"Many people in this group will be living with underlying health conditions, which put them at risk of coronavirus.

"It's important they are offered vaccination. We will be working closely with local authorities, the third sector and housing organisations to make sure we reach all those who are eligible.

"And we'll be taking the vaccine to people rather than expecting them to visit clinics for vaccination."

'Stay local' plans

The health minister was questioned about any plans to impose a stay local restriction on people in Wales from Friday.

"There are key factors about how effective the vaccine is in preventing mortality, in preventing serious harm and there is still developing information about transmission that we are not aware of.

"The key factor is the response that we all have and the choices we make. It is really important to stick to the process that we are going to be setting out," Mr Gething responded.

"Stay local is part of that. If we are going to have an effective restart for parts of our tourism, like self contained accommodation, we do realise that a stay local rule will mean those businesses won't be able to open.

"We are thinking about what stay local will mean. It is asking people to stick with it for a period of weeks and to be sensible about it.

"We do recognise that if we go to stay local it will be slightly different depending on where you live.

"A few weeks of that and then we think we may be in a position to go beyond that."