Covid: One million people in Wales have had full vaccine

More than one million people in Wales have received both doses of their Covid vaccine, official data shows.

Public Health Wales (PHW) has confirmed that 1,000,706 people have had the full dose of the coronavirus vaccine - almost a third of the Welsh population.

Figures also show that 2,091,824 in Wales have now had their first jab - that's two-third of the population.

Two further Covid deaths were reported in Wales, both in the north, on Sunday while PHW confirmed 46 new Covid cases.

Wales' weekly infection rate stands at 9.7 cases for every 100,000 people.

The overall Covid death toll in Wales, according to PHW figures, is 5,566 people since the start of the pandemic.

Figures released on Sunday cover 24 hours up to 09:00 BST on Friday as data is no longer published on Saturday.

The confirmation that one million people - or 31.7% of the population - are fully vaccinated in Wales comes as studies show the Pfizer and AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines are highly effective against the variant identified in India after two doses.

Some 66.3% of the Welsh population have had at least one vaccine but a Public Health England report said two jabs of either vaccine give a similar level of protection against symptomatic disease from the Indian variant as they do for the Kent one.

However, both vaccines were only 33% effective against the Indian variant three weeks after the first dose. This compared with 50% effectiveness against the Kent variant.

Latest data showed the number of people with the Indian variant of concern had risen to 28 in Wales.

PHW have said that the "majority" of Indian variant cases in Wales are "associated with travel or with known contacts" and added "robust contact tracing processes are in place."

Health officials say they do "expect this number to go up" as it "may be slightly more transmissible" than the dominant Kent variant in Wales.

PHW's coronavirus incident director has said "most health boards" have seen cases of the Indian variant of concern and added it "underlines the message" to get vaccinated as soon as people are asked.

"We are seeing cases of the new variant in Wales but the numbers are small so far," said Dr Eleri Davies.

"We are seeing an increase in those as we investigate and follow up the contacts and of course, you have seen the figures from England and the fast rise there so we are expecting to see more.

"I think with the latest information about the effectiveness of the vaccines, then we are in a good position in Wales with the success of the vaccine programme.

"It's clear that, to date, the Kent variant is covered by the vaccine and also the other variants that we are following closely, there is still retained efficacy.

"So I think the fact that we are progressing well with our vaccine programme in Wales is very heartening under the circumstances. "

The local authority with the highest rolling case rate for the last seven days is Newport with a case rate of 33 per 100,000 people, followed by Cardiff and Wrexham.

There were seven Welsh counties with no new Covid cases while Denbighshire (3.1), Rhondda Cynon Taf (3.3) and Gwynedd (4) and had the lowest infection rates. Wales' rolling average for deaths is 0.6 daily deaths.

On the case rates, when broken down into communities, 94% have had two or fewer positive tests in the last week.

A total of 2,043,254 people have been tested for the virus since the start of the pandemic, with 3,536,315 tests taken. There have been 12,413 tests since the last report.

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The postcode search has been updated to replace data for health boards in Scotland with data for local councils. In England, data for county councils has been replaced with data for district councils. Figures for boroughs and unitary authorities remain unchanged.