Health Minister: Ongoing Wrexham confirmed cases linked to “relatively closed community” of people connected to Rowan Foods

Wales’ Health Minister today said the reason there has been no wider sustained community transmission in Wrexham is that new reported cases could be connected to ‘some of the community that works within Rowan Foods’.

Yesterday saw Wrexham rank top yet again for new confirmed cases, with six, a position it has regularly held in Wales. In the last 21 days Wrexham has seen 103 confirmed cases out of the 400 total in Wales, the next highest being Flintshire with 38 cases.

That pattern continues for the more recent reporting timeframes from Public Health Wales at 14 and 7 days.

The local outbreak reports have not shown significant increases, and have said there has been no spread to the wider community.

Today we noted the figure of six, one less than the entire of Scotland for the same reporting period, and asked Health Minister Vaughan Gething for his understanding of the local ongoing figures and if he had detail on if the confirmed cases were in care homes, hospital, or community transmission.

Mr Gething replied: “I think the comparison with any other part of Wales or the UK is difficult when we have such very, very low numbers.”

“I indicated at the start, even with cases in Wrexham, our overall total other positivity rate is 0.2 per cent with the figures on Sunday, and so we actually do have very low levels of transmission within Wales and that’s a real success story.”

“Within Wrexham though, we don’t think they are sustained community transmission. We don’t think it’s been driven by care homes in themselves but of course, we continue to test on a weekly basis care homes in Wales, and if, transmission rates remain very low, we’ll move to a to weekly cycle of regular care home testing.”

“We do think though, that there is an issue of transmission within some of the community that works within Rowan Foods. So it’s a relatively closed community. That’s why we haven’t seen sustained transmission.”

“I am still concerned, we get on top of that, and that people take the advice and support that’s available, and they’re able to effectively self isolate.”

“It’s why I’m so concerned about houses of multiple occupancy, because there are people almost always have shared facilities, whether in a house converted for bed sits, or indeed, in something more like a caravan. That’s very difficult for people to self isolate so the opportunities for transmission between people and surfaces is there.”

“But we’re still in a position where we don’t have evidence of sustained community transmission, and that is because even within Wrexham, we are not seeing numbers go up in the way that they would do if you had the sort of scenarios that are driving concern in Leicester, Blackburn and other places within England.”

Recommendations from the Inquiry into the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak, and its management, on health and social care in Wales

We also asked about a new report from the Welsh Parliament’s Health Committee, that has a range of recommendations relating to the pandemic response in Wales. One discusses the merits of contact tracing starting when symptomatic, however notes that might not be practical in the winter.

We asked the minister about the 24 hour test result recommendation, and if he would be looking at the recommendation that would see contact tracing beginning either on receipt of a positive test, or within 24 hours.

Mr Gething said: “I’m obviously reviewing the recommendations from the committee from the report.

“When it comes to the advice we’re receiving, of course, as well as the health committee having a view we’ve got very clear advice from all four chief medical officers and that is they would like to see us move to a system of either concentrating on symptom, or within a time period. So not the recommendation the health committee have chosen to make, but the recommendation of the four medical officers, and in particular our chief medical officer here in Wales.”

“As I indicated earlier, we’re in a position where we are getting to high proportions of people already within 24 hours, 80 per cent of index cases within 24 hours, 74 per cent of contacts within 24 hours as well. So we already have an effective system,  I’m looking to see that build up as we know there’ll be more stress and pressure as we expect more people with coronavirus-like symptoms through the autumn and going into the winter. There will be more pressure on tests, and then a greater need to see people actually successfully follow up and contacted.

“If you contact on symptoms, then actually in the autumn or winter you are going to have a very large number of people who don’t have Coronavirus who are going to be asked to isolate under that model. Now that would be really disruptive, and part of my concern is if that was the model that we adopted, I’d be really concerned that people could have fatigue about being asked to isolate again and again and again.

“Actually we need people to take seriously advice a given by the NHS Wales test trace protects service to self isolate.

“That means we need to underscore that, I think, with a positive test result, that means that people are asked to isolate because they’ve had a test result that was positive or close contact of theirs has.”

The Welsh Government ended its daily lunchtime briefings last week, now moving to a regular Tuesday ministerial briefing along with a First Minister briefing on the Friday of the regular 21 day regulation updates.

It was mentioned last week there had been 97 daily briefings during the pandemic (with Wrexham.com attending all but a handful, with some noticeable absentees) and they would be resumed if there was a future uptick in the pandemic.

You can view today’s briefing, and Q&A session on the below video:

Yn fyw gyda’r Gweinidog Iechyd, Vaughan Gething | Live with Health Minister, Vaughan Gething https://t.co/tuLbyaAm4Q

— Welsh Government (@WelshGovernment) July 21, 2020