Schools in Wales will begin to reopen throughout January unless the evidence about the new strain of coronavirus changes, the country’s health minister has said.

Vaughan Gething said the Welsh Government would receive updated advice from scientific and medical experts about the variant’s potential impact on reopening schools “over the next few days”.

Some schools in Wales are preparing to resume face-to-face learning as early as Wednesday, in line with the government’s current plan to allow them to choose when to reopen ahead of an expected full return by January 18.

But education unions have called for a rethink of the plan due to safety concerns after it was announced the Covid-19 variant spreading across Wales was 70% more transmissible.

On Monday, Mr Gething said any changes to the plan would be based on new evidence about the variant and its impact which he said “may lead to a different choice” in the coming days.

He told the Welsh Government’s Covid-19 press briefing: “We’re expecting updated advice from our own scientific and public health experts over the next few days. If we get that in later today that may lead to a decision, if we get that tomorrow it may lead to a decision.

“But I want to be really clear, the deliberate choices we are making are always underpinned by evidence.”

Mr Gething said the government is still planning for schools “to open in a flexible way”, and that control measures to prevent the spread of the virus have been “largely effective”.

“We have good evidence – and it’s a credit to teachers and education leaders and school support staff more generally – that our schools have been environments where learning has taken place, and where we don’t have evidence that there’s been transmission between pupils and staff,” Mr Gething said.

“That shows the control measures that have been put in place have been largely effective and that is to the credit of people who are running our schools and the way that our learners have behaved as well.

“It’s really… that the larger concern about the impact of schools opening on the transmission rate has been about the fact that it means there are more opportunities for adults to mix as well.”

He rejected the suggestion of moving teachers into a higher priority group for vaccination, saying that doing so for those in the profession or in others such as the police or taxi drivers would “have an impact on people who are at real risk of harm”.