More than half of recent cases aged under 40

OF the people who have caught Covid-19 in the past seven days in Wales, 55% of them are under 40.

The highest individual age group for cases was the 20-29 year old bracket, which amounted to 17% of all cases.

Fully 10% of the cases were in children under the age of 10, which may reflect the high levels of testing in Welsh schools.

The reasons for the cases mainly falling among young people could be because the vaccine rollout has yet to reach the youngest people in Wales.

These figures show how the vaccine coverage varies among working age adults: ■■60-64 years: 187,283 (91.1%; ■■55-59 years: 206,745 (88.5%); ■■50-54 years: 195,486 (85.8%); ■■40-49 years: 238,990 (61%); ■■30-39 years: 121,659 (28.9%); ■■18-29 years: 85,955 (18.5%)

We asked incident director for Public Health Wales Dr Giri Shankar why older people are still catching Covid after they have had a vaccination and whether the vaccine rollout had led to fewer admissions to Wales’s hospitals.

“The vaccination mainly prevents the serious complications and death from coronavirus,” he said.

“Data is increasingly firming up on how effective it is against preventing mild to moderate symptomatic infection and asymptomatic infection, with early indications suggestive of good effectiveness. In addition, no vaccine is 100% effective, so it is really important that people still take care to follow social distancing and hygiene measures.”

Mr Shankar added that the risk posed by Covid had not gone away.

He said: “When there are large numbers of positive cases within the community, it provides the potential for an increase in incidence of cases and associated complications, including hospitalisations and deaths.

“Coronavirus still poses risks to our communities, and even though the vaccination programme is on course, there are still a large number of people who are not fully vaccinated.

“It is really important that we keep up the practices that have been successful in driving down the infection rate – so maintaining a social distance, washing hands, wearing masks in indoor spaces, and self-isolating strictly when asked to do so.

“All these methods will help to prevent transmission of the virus, and will protect everyone.”