WELSH Health Minister Vaughan Gething said members of the public should carefully consider their actions over the festive period as the impact of increased coronavirus cases and deaths would not hit "just one Christmas."

Speaking on the Today programme, he said that people often became "obsessed" with specific rules on coronavirus.

"We're not looking as our preference to disturb the Christmas arrangements," he said.

"(Consider) should you go and see lots of different people? Should you see the maximum number permitted or should you think about how you can restrict your contacts?

"Because this isn't just one Christmas.

"These are many future life events we are planning for because the greater mixing, the greater the number of infections, the greater number of people who will need hospital care and the greater number of people who will not leave that care."

Mr Gething told the Today programme that a number of "significant interventions" would be taking place in Wales to help reduce the spread of infections over the festive period.

"It wasn't very long ago that we were facing lots of criticism for taking action in the hospitality industry," he added.

"Now the pendulum has swung and people are wondering loudly and persistently whether we need to do more.

He added that "distanced learning" would be taking place in Wales from Monday and hospitals would be limited to only "essential and Covid-related" activity.

"We have a long journey ahead of us," he said.

"The pandemic will end but it's up to all of us to make choices about how we get there."

Business Secretary Alok Sharma insisted the Government was confident that supplies of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine would not be disrupted if there was a no-deal Brexit, although he refused to set out what contingency plans were in place.

He told the BBC that was partly due to security concerns around the supply of the vaccine, which is made in Belgium.

"We have put in place arrangements to make sure that the distribution of vaccines is not in any way disrupted," he told the BBC, but added: "I'm not going to go into the detail of that."

Mr Sharma said supplies could be flown in and added: "I'm confident that as things stand these vaccines will continue to flow into the UK."

There has been speculation that the RAF could be used to airlift supplies if there is chaos at ports following the end of the Brexit transition period.

Dr Nikita Kanani, director of primary care at NHS England, urged people waiting for coronavirus vaccinations to be patient and wait to be contacted by their doctors, rather than ringing up the practices themselves.

"You can imagine that general practices are very busy, particularly on a Monday morning," she told the Today programme.

"There's a huge range of things that general practices are already doing so if we can ask for people to just wait a moment and wait to be contacted that would be very appreciated."