Wales’s R rate still below England’s
THE latest estimate of the R number for coronavirus in Wales has increased but remains slightly below the rate in England.
The R number represents the amount of people each person with Covid-19 is infecting with the virus.
If that number goes above one the number of people becoming infected with the virus will grow exponentially but as long as it remains below one, the number of people infected with the virus will fall. In Wales the most recent estimate of the reproduction number according to First Minister Mark Drakeford is between 1.1 and 1.5. This is up from between 0.5 and 1 three weeks ago. There has been a spike in cases since the start of September leading to a climbing R rate and the majority of people in Wales going into some form of local lockdown.
There is greater uncertainty in the estimates for Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland partly due to the smaller numbers of cases and deaths compared to England. This is why the range for Wales is so big.
The same is true for Scotland where the current range is between 1.3 and 1.7, which is up from 1.2 and 1.6. For England the R number is between 1.3 and 1.6 which is an increase from between 1.2 and 1.5 three weeks ago.
The Department of Health in England publishes the R number for every region once a week:
East of England - 1.2 to 1.3 (up from 1.1 to 1.3 last week)
London - 1.2 to 1.6 (up from 1.2 to 1.5 last week)
Midlands - 1.2 to 1.5 (same as last week)
North East and Yorkshire - 1.2 to 1.6 (up from 1.2 to 1.5 last week)
North West - 1.2 to 1.5 (same as last week)
South East - 1.1 to 1.4 (up from 1 to 1.3 last week)
South West - 1.1 to 1.4 (same as last week)
Northern Ireland’s rate has remained stable at a range of between 0.5 and 0.9.
At the start of the crisis the R rate was as high as three and there were lots of cases. This made the R rate a very important measurement. However as there are fewer cases the R value becomes less useful because with a small sample size even one or two new cases can wildly skew the number.