Wales still has highest rate of infection of all UK countries

WALES remains the UK nation with the highest Covid-19 infection rate despite a fall in cases for the third week in a row, latest figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that 131,600 people in Wales had the virus in the week ending April 30, equating to 4.33% of the population or around one in 25 people.

That’s a drop from the 172,300 people (5.67%) with the disease in Wales during the previous week, or around one in 18 people. It was a similar picture in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with each seeing a significant fall in their Covid levels. In England, around one in 35 (2.91%) had Covid in the week ending April 30, while it was one in 30 in Scotland (3.55%) and one in 40 (2.45%) in Northern Ireland.

The data suggests that the recent surge of coronavirus, driven in the main by the Omicron BA.2 variant, has peaked and is now decreasing weekon-week.

However, the virus is still circulating across much of the country.

The ONS infection survey is now the most reliable measure of the prevalence of Covid-19 in the UK. It uses a sample of swab tests collected regularly from tens of thousands of households, and is therefore able to estimate the percentage of people likely to test positive for coronavirus at any point in time, regardless of when they caught the virus, how many times they have had it and whether they have symptoms.

Figures from hospitals show that on May 5 there were 380 “confirmed” patients in hospital but only 82 of them were being actively treated for the virus. A week earlier those figures were 455 and 86 respectively.

The number of patients in ICU beds with Covid has decreased in the last week from 25 on April 28 to 16 on May 5. Cardiff and Vale UHB had the most of any health board with six, followed by Hywel Dda UHB and Swansea Bay UHB both with three, Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB with two and Betsi Cadwaladr UHB and Aneurin Bevan UHB both with one.