THE Welsh government said that it had not ruled out imposing new local restrictions after Wales’s 17-day “firebreak lockdown” ended today.

First Minister Mark Drakeford told a Cardiff press conference that a new national set of rules were in place — but ministers had access to a “menu of actions that could be taken at a local level if necessary.”

From today, people can travel anywhere within Wales, two households can form a support bubble, groups of 15 people can meet indoors, groups of 30 people can meet outdoors and schools and businesses that shut during the firebreak can reopen.

The measures — including a ban on travel to and from England without a “reasonable excuse” — will be reviewed in two weeks, he added.

Wales’s chief medical officer Dr Frank Atherton said there were some “early signs of stability” in the country, and Mr Drakeford said Wales was “starting to see some signs” that cases of Covid-19 were falling — but that the full impact of the firebreak lockdown would not be known “for a couple of weeks yet.”

He said: “The all-Wales level has fallen back from 250 cases per 100,000 people to just under 220 cases.

“In Merthyr Tydfil, which saw rates as high as 700 cases per 100,000 in the population, we are now seeing rates down to around 520: still far too high, of course, but an important and encouraging fall.”

Mr Drakeford said the number of people admitted to hospital was continuing to rise, with more than 1,400 coronavirus-related cases in Welsh hospitals, higher than in April, warning that “coronavirus is still very much with us” and “full of unpleasant surprises” such as the discovery of a new mutated strain of the virus in mink in Denmark.