‘No virus deaths for fourth day in August’

NO CORONAVIRUS deaths have been recorded in Wales for the fourth time this month, it has been revealed.

Public Health Wales (PHW) confirmed yesterday that the death toll since the outbreak began remains at 1,586.

There were no new deaths reported by Public Health Wales on 13 occasions in July (July 6, 10, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28) and three times previously this month on August 3, 9 and 10.

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 deaths in all places and when coronavirus is only suspected, found that 2,513 had died with coronavirus in Wales up to July 31. That was an increase of 10 on the previous week.

Meanwhile, PHW said yesterday that the number of lab-confirmed positive cases of coronavirus in Wales had increased by 15 to bring the total to 17,499.

Conwy, the Vale of Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire recorded the most positive cases with two each, followed by Caerphilly, Newport, Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Wrexham, Cardiff, RCT and Powys with one. All other local authorities had no new cases.

Despite testing capacity standing at more than 15,000 each day in Wales, 4,272 took place on Wednesday. However, the Welsh Government said this additional unused capacity would prove useful should Wales see any local spikes in cases.

The total number of tests done now stands at 460,800. The number of people who have been tested in total in Wales is 277,776 with 260,277 testing negative.