CHATTING in pubs, restaurants and homes was "mostly" how coronavirus spread before Wales' firebreak lockdown, Public Health Wales has said.

Dr Chris Williams, Public Health Wales' incident director for the coronavirus outbreak, said it was due to how people behaved in venues, rather than venues making mistakes or failing to comply with rules and regualtions.

Dr Williams told BBC Wales: "It's not to do particularly with the nature of the pub or the bar. It's just the fact that you're talking to someone across a table who's in a different household.

"Talking, unfortunately, is great for transmission, as is singing and shouting. Those are the kind of things that we see, that manifest themselves in the rising numbers."

He added: "Every time you stop and talk to someone, particularly if they're outside your household, then you've just had a potential transmission event.

"You may never know about it because many people are asymptomatic.

"I think we're increasingly recognising that this is a respiratory droplet infection, so the closer you are talking to someone, the better it transmits.

"Speaking to people is something we find very hard not to do. I think that's part of the problem because we don't see that as a bad activity."

Public Health Wales data suggests schools were "not seeing extensive transmission".

Dr Simon Cottrell said the team were always hopeful they had seen the virus peak.

He said: "At the moment we're still seeing increasing trends in people going into hospital because they have Covid.

"We hope if the firebreaker is to be successful then, in the next three to four weeks, we'll see that levelling off or maybe even reducing.

"You're always hopeful that you've seen the peak - so every time you come in and you see a new peak that's higher than the previous peak, it's upsetting for us just like everybody else."