Further hospitality support on way as First Minister reiterates “minimise travel in and out of” Chester and Cheshire West advice

Advice earlier this week to ‘minimise travel in and out’ of Enhanced Response Areas in England has been reiterated today by the First Minister.

Near neighbours Chester and Cheshire West is one of six new areas that UK Government have assigned additional support to help deal with a rise in Covid-19 cases.

Today saw Public Health Wales report +14 cases for Wrexham in the daily dashboard update, with our seven day rolling benchmark figure now 36 per 100k up to the 13th of June – with 97% of new cases in North Wales now the delta variant.

Over the border Cheshire West and Chester has seen their rate hit 110 per 100k, and The Countess of Chester hospital has seen 4 admissions in the seven days up to the 13th.

Locally we have been told that some hospitality venues have seen bookings in Wrexham drop by a third over the last week compared to the previous week, with suppliers also reporting similar drop in trade.

A few miles north in Chester a range of hospitality businesses have closed their doors over the last week as staff members test positive for coronavirus and isolation processes begin, with local licensees pointing to those issues starting to affect customer confidence in Wrexham.

We asked the First Minister how keenly are issues on border areas being observed, and if there would be any new direct revenue support to hospitality to reflect the new circumstances in what was already a tough trading position.

The First Minister replied, “I think we’ve said over a number of weeks that when you have clusters of a new variant, very close to a very porous border, then the chances of just turning it back at the border are pretty slender. I’m not surprised at all to hear that people become more cautious as they see numbers going up.

“We will work with the sector, my colleague Economy Minister Vaughan Gething announced £2.5 million pounds extra on Monday of this week to help those businesses affected by the delay that we’ve had to introduce in the reopening of some indoor hospitality, and we are working on a further package. We discussed the package yesterday at the Social Partnership Council.

“The details are still being worked through with the different sectors , so there will be more help for businesses here in Wales who find themselves in this situation”.

With cases rising across the border the First Minister was asked again about people being urged not to travel to help stop transmission.

The First Minister said, “I do reinforce the advice that has already been given to those populations by the government in England. That advice is if you’re living in an English hotspot, the advice for some weeks now has been to minimise travel, not to travel in or out of those areas.”

“I think that is good advice that has been given to those populations and I’m very happy to reinforce it and repeated from a Welsh perspective.”

You can view the full briefing on the below video link:

Yn fyw nawr gyda’r Prif Weinidog Mark Drakeford | Live now with First Minister Mark Drakeford https://t.co/ZsJnjgvHjD

— Welsh Government #KeepWalesSafe (@WelshGovernment) June 18, 2021