No new deaths due to coronavirus reported in Wales for the first time since lockdown began

Today has seen a landmark in the reporting of figures related to the pandemic in Wales, with no new deaths reported for today in the Public Health Wales data.

The first death as a result of coronavirus in Wales was reported in Wrexham on March 16.

Since then, 1,531 people have died, according to Public Health Wales figures.

Today has also seen a low count of just eight confirmed cases across Wales.

First Minister Mark Drakeford gave an update on the situation in Wrexham in terms of the outbreak and community confirmed cases, and also queried what data people should look at if they wished to track what was going on as recent Technical Advisory Cell documents say measures such as number of new cases and GP reports are more relevant than the R figure.

The First Minister said: “In relation to the outbreak at Rowan Foods the latest note I have is from the outbreak control team at the end of Friday of last week. 917 people tested have tested negative for Coronavirus, the number of confirmed positive cases is at 289.

“So as you can see, the number of new cases being added is now very modest and that figure is as a result of the testing that was carried out over a concentrated period.”

“There is no evidence of widespread community transmission away from the site and the outbreak control team continue to deal with it as a matter that is primarily focused on the workforce at the site. The Health and Safety Executive have been directly involved alongside the rest of the team, and the team are confident as of last Friday that the things that needs to be in place are in place.

“Of course, we continue to monitor it, the outbreak control team will meet again tomorrow and if there are any changes in the patterns we are seeing, then we will be able to respond to those as well. But for the time being, it has been regarded by the outbreak control team as an outbreak confined to the Rowan Foods site and its workforce, and the Test Trace Protect system has worked well, in being able to contact them.

“It’s a very good question about the ‘R’ number. The fewer cases there are, the less reliable the TR number becomes because it can be influenced by small numbers of cases breaking out.

“So I would say to people who want to know how things are fixed locally, that you are better off getting the information that you can have from your local health board about the number of people being admitted to hospital in that area with Coronavirus, the number of critical care beds that are occupied by Coronavirus cases, whether there are deaths from Coronavirus in your locality.

“All of that will help people to know the state of Coronavirus in your local part of Wales. Those figures, as you say they do differ from place to place, the big pattern for the whole of Wales is that there is far less Coronavirus anywhere than they was at the peak and that the numbers other than in those confined outbreak cases, the numbers continue to go in the right direction.”

In Flintshire, there have been 533 positive Covid tests since the start of the pandemic and has one of the lowest numbers of coronavirus cases per 100,000 per population at 342, neighbouring Denbighshire has the second-highest at 755.