AROUND 80 percent of people will contract Covid-19, Wales' chief medical officer has said.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread around the world, Dr Frank Atherton said 80 per cent of people will contract the virus 'at some point'.

He said: "What we've been doing, the strategy in the UK as a whole, has been to suppress that, to delay the onset of that so that the NHS can cope, so that we have time for the NHS to get ready.

"At some point, once the interventions that we've put in place here in Wales and in the UK are lifted, there is a risk that people will then start to become infected again.

"And so the way in which we release those measures will be very critical.

"What we're doing at the moment is watching other countries which have put these quite repressive measures in place, to see what happens when they lift, how quickly can we lift those measures?

"These are all unanswered questions but everybody is vulnerable because nobody has experienced this virus before - it's a new virus to humanity."

Dr Atherton warned it would be a "very challenging time for our NHS" and said staff were working in "unprecedented times".

He added: "It's going to be tight and it's going to be difficult and it is going to be hard for staff.

"There is no doubt about that but our staff are stepping up magnificently to that challenge and we are in the preparing mode and things are quiet in most of our hospitals at the moment."