266 Coronavirus tests in Flintshire out of 12,617 tests in Wales as new dashboards reveal pandemic data

Flintshire has had just 266 coronavirus ‘testing episodes’ in the area new data released on Monday shows.

The information has been released via an all new dashboard by Public Health Wales, and contains information which will be refreshed on a daily basis.

Currently Welsh Government say around 1,100 tests a day are being carried out in Wales, so the testing data behind the information is limited.

The image above shows a Wales-wide view of the age and sex distribution of confirmed cases. 11.6% are female aged 50-59 , with the next highest being females aged 40-49.

For the first time testing data has been broken down to a local authority area, with the data also revealing overall 15,039 tests have been carried out with 12,754 individuals tested, with 12,617 ‘testing episodes’ logged for the Wales specific total.

It is noted individuals may be tested more than once, and the information presented is based off 6 week ‘episode periods’.

If an individual is tested more than once in that period, they are only counted once.

Overall Betsi Cadwaladr University health board has 1,315 tests stated in the below table.

The below table also has a ‘cumulative cases’ column, which is the number of confirmed cases, eg. 62 so far in Flintshire.

Another dashboard logs the types of calls to the 111 system, sortable by health board.

A third dashboard shows data on diagnosed respiratory issues, again sortable by health board area.

New symptom tracker 

A COVID symptom tracker project has been created by doctors and scientists at King’s College London, Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals working in partnership with ZOE – a health science company.

The research is led by Prof. Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, and currently has around 1.8million people submitting data across the UK.

The data collected includes information on a persons health status and lifestyles, as well as any vulnerability issues.

The information also tracks symptoms in an attempt to log and be more alert to to early symptoms.

The information is being shared to ‘bonafide researchers’ as well as publishing updates to the public.

Lead researcher Professor Tim Spector said: “When combined with other symptoms, people with loss of smell and taste appear to be 3 times more likely to have contracted COVID-19 according to our data, and should therefore self-isolate for seven days to reduce the spread of the disease.

This urgent research is only possible thanks to the 1.8 million citizen scientists logging their symptoms every day.

This also gives us an evolving map of the UK of where symptoms are occurring two to three weeks before a strain on the NHS, which is why it’s vital to continue logging your health and symptoms, even when you feel completely healthy, and encourage others to use the app.”

The localised data shows for North Wales:

• Flintshire has 2555 contributors and the data estimates 4.94% with symptomatic COVID-19
• Wrexham has 2354 contributors and the data estimates 4.67% with symptomatic COVID-19
• Denbighshire has 1594 contributors and the data estimates 3.32% with symptomatic COVID-19
• Gwynedd has 1875 contributors and the data estimates 4% with symptomatic COVID-19
• Ynys Môn has 1039 contributors and the data estimates 5.2% with symptomatic COVID-19
• Conwy has 1946 contributors and the data estimates 3.49% with symptomatic COVID-19

People can also have COVID-19 and have no symptoms, but still able to pass it to others.

If the estimates are correct the population of areas could mean 3500 people on Ynys Môn could be showing COVID-19 symptoms, and nearly 7,700 in Flintshire.

On Monday, First Minister Mark Drakefrod said “While we know through testing the number of people who identify as having coronavirus, that will be a fraction of the actual number because of the way it’s circulating in the community.

When we quote these figures, nobody should believe that it is only those people have coronavirus. I think it’s important not to be too specific about how many people are out there, because nobody at all actually knows.”

You can view the full map here, or get more details on the project / app here.