Public Health Wales & Health Board work “to urgently contact just over 300 workers that have not yet presented for testing”

Public Health Wales have said there is ‘urgent’ work taking place to contact 300 workers that have not yet presented for testing.

The update this afternoon has also noted there has been no increase on the 166 confirmed cases figure issued yesterday given in connection to the outbreak. Rowan Foods have a direct and agency workforce which totals 1500, with it previously reported that ‘over 1000’ tests had taken place.

The wider stats in North Wales – includes 22 new confirmed case in Wrexham (not connected to outbreak) https://t.co/LcCHpN5zXU

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) June 27, 2020

Earlier today we reported how Rowan Foods have said a HSE Inspector visit over the last few days has ended with ‘no enforceable action taken’, more here.

This afternoon Dr Giri Shankar, Incident Director for the coronavirus outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said: “Testing of the workforce associated with an outbreak of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the Wrexham area is continuing.

“Public Health Wales is in the process of combining test information to identify the total number of positive cases associated with the workforce at Rowan Foods Ltd. So far this process has identified a total of 166 confirmed cases.”

“The number of cases reported today suggests no change has occurred in the past 24 hours. However, we expect this number to go up once all the workers associated with the site have been tested and their results analysed.”

“We are working with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to urgently contact just over 300 workers that have not yet presented for testing.”

“As we would expect with any focused track and trace process, we will identify additional asymptomatic cases. Finding these cases does not mean that the rate of infection in the Wrexham area is increasing as a whole.”

“There is no evidence that Rowan Foods is the source of the outbreak. The multi-agency team managing the outbreak with Public Health Wales will continue to review the situation and work with the employer, their workforce and wider community to bring this outbreak to a swift conclusion.”

On Thursday the 18th it was announced 38 people were found to have confirmed cases of coronavirus connected to the food factory in Wrexham, that increased by two on Monday 22nd as testing was ramped up locally. A day later the incident was declared an outbreak. By Wednesday 24th that increased to 97, Thursday 106, and yesterday Friday 26th the figure reached 166.

Yesterday we asked the First Minister and the Health Minister about the situation locally – you can read their comments here.

Across in Anglesey where another food factory has a declared outbreak there is news today that “data analysed by Public Health Wales and Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board showing slowdown in terms of positive cases amongst Two Sisters staff”.