America woke up this morning to a new face in the White House, gone is the self centred, ignorant and apathetic resident of the past 4 years, welcome to the empathetic, people first and oozing with character and decency figure of President Joe Biden. The whole of the UK including the devolved nations hope that we will wake up one morning and find that the figure at the head of UK Government will also have moved out of the residence in London and someone with the characteristics of the new American President will have moved in…

We can only hope because the last 10 months have been nothing short of catastrophic for the population of this country, and there is no end in sight. Take the performance of the Education Secretary this morning and that gives you the benchmark of the performance of the cabinet. Whichever school he attended it did not provide evidence based on that performance that he actually learned anything, children, parents, grandparents, families in general deserted by the establishment when in time of need, and no end in sight.

Another 46 people have died in Wales with coronavirus; the latest Public Health Wales figures have shown. There were also 1,153 new Covid infections reported, taking the total number of cases to 185,035. There have been 4,392 deaths with Covid reported since the start of the pandemic in Wales.

 

12 of the deaths reported on Thursday were in the Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board area, 9 in Swansea Bay, 8 in Cwm Taf Morgannwg and 7 in the Aneurin Bevan Health Board area. 6 people were reported to have died with Covid in the Hywel Dda Health Board area and 4 in the Cardiff and Vale Health Board area.

Today 1,290 deaths have been reported in the UK. It means the number of deaths now stands at 94,580.

Today's update from Public Health Wales...

The number of people to have received their first jab of the vaccine in Wales now stands at 190,435, with 396 having had their second dose.