Another five C-19 deaths confirmed in Wales

FIVE more people in Wales have died after contracting coronavirus, it has been announced.

Public Health Wales (PHW) confirmed in its daily update yesterday that there were five new deaths following a positive laboratory test for Covid-19.

All of them were recorded in Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board which covers Wrexham, Anglesey, Flintshire, Denbighshire and Gwynedd.

It means the overall number of deaths with lab-confirmed Covid-19 since the outbreak began has reached 1,554.

There have been no new deaths reported by Public Health Wales on 13 occasions in July (July 6, 10, 12, 13 and 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28).

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean no-one died with the virus on those specific dates as it can take several days for a death to be logged officially.

So-called “true” death figures published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which include all deaths where the virus was mentioned on a death certificate and not just cases identified in a lab, found that 2,501 had died with coronavirus in Wales up to July 17.

Meanwhile, PHW said on Wednesday that the number of lab-confirmed positive cases of coronavirus in Wales had increased by 32 to bring the total to 17,223.

Wrexham recorded by far the most positive cases with 15, followed by Flintshire with five and Blaenau Gwent with three.

Denbighshire recorded two new cases, while Caerphilly, Monmouthshire, Newport, Merthyr Tydfil, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire had one. All other local authorities had no new cases.

Despite testing capacity standing at 15,000 each day in Wales, just 3,640 took place on Tuesday, July 28.

Meanwhile, Wrexham has emerged as Wales’ coronavirus “hotspot” after topping the local authority chart for positive cases several times over the past fortnight.

The county now has 956.9 cases of the virus per 100,000 population since the outbreak began, second only to Merthyr Tydfil (959.8) in Wales.

Dr Chris Williams, incident director for the coronavirus outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said a myriad of factors could be to blame for a spike in this area.

These include an outbreak of cases at Rowan Foods meat processing plant and a rise in infections at Wrexham Maelor Hospital.