Posted: Mon 6th Jul 2020

Zero Covid-19 deaths reported today for Wales – no evidence of community transmission away from site of local oubreak

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Monday, Jul 6th, 2020

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.

Today has also seen a low count of just eight confirmed cases across Wales, with just one in Wrexham – full table below.

The data published by Public Health Wales on the daily twitter updates and dashboards refers to ‘reported’ deaths, however looking at the raw data there was one day last month where the date of death had a zero count. That day was the 18th June, however on that day Public Health Wales tweeted +5 new deaths.

There is often a lag in reporting of deaths due to the timescales involved, and there appears to a lag relating to weekends and such data.

Today we asked First Minister Mark Drakeford for 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.”

Testing and confirmed cases for Wrexham.

Public Health Wales said this afternoon of the local outbreak: “The multi-agency team managing the outbreak of Coronavirus associated with Rowan Foods Ltd in Wrexham has recorded 289 cases. There continues to be no evidence that this outbreak is factory-based, and the results we have identified are what we would expect to see when a focused testing takes place.”

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



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