Covid: Groups of 30 to be able to meet outdoors in Wales
- Published
Up to 30 people will be able to meet outdoors and extended households can expand to include a third from Monday, the Welsh government has said.
However an increase in the numbers able to meet indoors in homes or at events will not happen until at least late June.
The Welsh government said this would allow more people to get vaccinated.
It said there was "growing concern" about the spread of the variant first identified in India.
There are currently 97 cases of the variant in Wales, which has been named the Delta variant by the World Health Organization.
This is up 67% compared with last week.
First Minister Mark Drakeford said: "The risk of infection is significantly less outdoors than it is indoors. This is why we are phasing in the changes in this three-week cycle."
"This will allow more people to enjoy events outdoors and take advantage of the Welsh summer, while we continue to roll out the vaccination programme to all adults.
"We will review the public health situation again in a couple of weeks to see whether we can continue to relax the restrictions and restart indoor events."
The changes being announced mean from Monday:
- Three homes can form an extended household
- Up to 30 people can meet outdoors, including in private gardens, outdoor hospitality and public places
- Large outdoor events, like concerts, football matches and organised runs can go ahead for up to 4,000 people when not seated, and 10,000 when seated
Further rule changes on indoor activity will be considered by the Welsh government later in the month.
Those could include allowing six people to meet indoors in private homes and holiday accommodation and increasing the numbers able to go to organised indoor gatherings and indoor events.
Wales has the highest vaccination rate in the UK. A total of 2,161,028 people have been given a first vaccine dose (68.5%).
Figures also show 1,157,904 people have now had a second jab, or 36.7% of the population of Wales.
The case rate in Wales is currently 7.5 per 100,000 people over seven days.
A cluster of cases, attributed to the Delta variant, has been responsible for a spike in Conwy county, taking the case rate there to 22.
The whole of Wales reported 34 new positive tests a day on average in the past seven days.
That compares with 49 cases a day a month ago and 2,864 cases a day at the peak in December.