THE Welsh Government will be looking carefully this week at whether a requirement to stay local could replace the current 'stay at home' rule, the First Minister has said.

Speaking to the BBC Radio Wales Sunday Supplement today, Mark Drakeford said he felt there was a case for an intermediate stage between the current rules and people being able to travel freely across Wales.

"I said two weeks ago at the last review that I hoped this would be the last three weeks of the stay at home regulation," he explained. "That's what we will be trying to make happen on Friday this week. "The cabinet will be trying to draw together a package of measures that meet with the current public health circumstances.

"We will be looking at our top priority; to get children and young people back into school.

"We'll be following up the announcement we made on Thursday about resuming care home visits. "We will be looking at people's personal lives - who we meet and how we can meet them. We will be looking to see whether we can take the first tentative steps to in reopening the economy in non-essential retail. "I hope to be able to say something for the weeks beyond the next three weeks - that will look to Easter - and see weather there is any emerging headroom for us to do what we would like to do; to offer the prospect of reopening self contained accommodation in the tourism industry.

"I think there is a case for an intermediate step between stay at home and being able to travel anywhere across Wales.

"We will be looking carefully at whether an intermediate period of stay local would be the first step in a journey, remembering that in Wales that is how we are trying to approach the whole business; carefully, step by step, not doing too many things at once so we can monitor the impact of changes, and then restoring more freedoms to people and the economy once it's safe to do so."