Posted: Tue 18th Aug 2020

Minister says lessons will be learned as ONS figures state Wrexham had more Covid-19 related deaths than any other local authority in Wales or England for two weeks running

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Aug 18th, 2020

The Health Minister Vaughan Gething has said lessons will be learned as new Office of National Statistic figures report recent high death rates locally compared to the rest of Wales and England.

The Health Minister opened the lunchtime briefing by giving an overview of coronavirus in Wales, “The number of new cases remains low. In the last seven days 43,176 tests were carried out in Wales and just 113 were positive. That is a positivity rate of just 0.3%. There are three people in critical care and 70 people in hospital with Coronavirus in Wales today. This is the lowest number of COVID-19 patients in critical care since we started reporting.”

The Health Minister spoke of two incidents in Anglesey and Merythr, but was asked about Wrexham’s issues.

Locally we have reported the struggle to get direct local death data, with a North Wales MS  stating there had been 12 deaths in five days at the Wrexham Maelor after publishing information in higher level update bulletins, with a later update we managed to have released stated there had been 13 deaths between August 1st and August 14th.

The BBC asked, “Can I ask you about Wrexham and the data that we’re seeing from the Office of National Statistics that there have been more deaths registered involving Coronavirus in Wrexham than any other local authority in England and Wales for two weeks running? So the week ending seventh of August 9 hospital deaths in Wrexham 16 in the broader north Wales Health Board region, out of the 24 in the whole of Wales. Are you satisfied the Wrexham outbreak has been handled as well as it could have been, and given that health board is under direct control of the Welsh Government, do you take personal responsibility for the handling of outbreaks?”

The data referred to by the BBC is up to the 7th of August and was released earlier today by the ONS,  and says in Week 31 there were 6 hospital deaths related to Covid 19 and in Week 32 (beginning on August 3rd) there were sadly 9. That figure matches a previous high that was recorded in early May (Week 18). Week 32 also saw Denbighshire with 3 hospital deaths, and Flintshire with 3.

The Health Minister replied, “These are really difficult and exceptional circumstance and I don’t think it’s helpful for us to run around with the usual inaccurate suggestion that I’m directly controlling the Health Board. What is most important though, is of course I take responsibility not just for the North Wales Health Board, but for the whole National Health Service here in Wales, I am the Minister for the whole country, I discharge my responsibilities for the whole country.

“When it comes to the position in Wrexham, there will of course be learning points from the outbreak that has taken place there, the centre around Rowan Foods that has been well managed, the challenges that it has produced, and then the outbreak that took place centered around the Maelor that is being controlled. None of us should be complacent about that.”

“We’re seeing falling numbers in terms of infections, the testing that has been carried out for not just residents, members of public going into the Maelor, but staff, has been an important way to understand and to help control the spread of the virus within that hospital, as well as a renewed focus on infection prevention and control measures.”

“I think to try to give a blanket ‘everything has been done as well as possible there’s no opportunity for learning’ would be entirely wrong and given a misleading impression to our staff and the public. But you can see the falling numbers of cases compared to a few weeks ago, you can see that even with the additional if you like skewing of the data in Wrexham, with the hospital deaths that have taken place there, we’re seeing falling numbers within the Wrexham area, the significant community testing that took place showed there’s not been widespread community transmission.

“That’s important, not an absence of evidence of widespread transmission, but the evidence shows there has not been widespread community transmission within Wrexham. That’s really important that shows that our system is working as it should do, identifying clusters, taking proactive action.”

“I want to see more of that as we see different cases and clusters around the rest of the country. When you look at the last 7 day incidents, you’ll see that Wrexham had a fall of 35% incident rates over the last week on the rolling average and that does show a continuing and improved picture, but importantly for all of us, it shows us the risks from Coronavirus, if there is a further cluster that develops in other parts of the country, that’s where the message again is about the role we all have to play is so very, very important.”

A week ago Minister Julie James referred to a “lessons learned exercise” that has taken place at the local hospital. On Friday we asked the First Minister if he had sight of any such documents, however at that time he had not (more here).

You can view today’s briefing along with the Q&A session in the below video:

Top pic: A different view of the Health Minister earlier today.



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