Covid: Positive tests rise but critical care stable

The number of people testing positive for Covid-19 in Wales has risen, but the amount needing critical care has remained stable.

Wales' Covid case rate has increased every day for the past 12 days, according to Public Health Wales.

But this has not led to a large rise in those needing critical care, which has increased from an average of 10 to 11.

Dr Ami Jones, a consultant at the Aneurin Bevan health board, said more staff had been off work with Covid.

She said: "We've been pretty quiet in terms of Covid in intensive care for the last little while, but I have noticed in my population of colleagues, we've got lots of people off sick.

"I think it's affecting the general public I think there's a lot of it out there."

The Covid case rate - which measures the number of new infections per 100,000 people over seven days - has increased for each of the past 12 days, with this figure at 290.7 on Thursday.

This is more than eight times lower than the peak in early January, but testing requirements have changed since then, with asymptomatic people no longer requiring PCR tests after a positive lateral flow, meaning this figure is likely to be higher.

There were twice as many cases involving the sub-variant of Omicron (BA.2) sequenced in the last week compared to the main Omicron variant (BA.1).

It is the most dominant variant in all parts of Wales except Anglesey and Gwynedd.

There has been a small increase in the number of people with Covid being admitted to hospital - up to an average of 26 per day from 21 over the past week, and about 80% of hospital patients with Covid were being treated for something else.

Three health boards in Wales have not had any patients on intensive care for Covid for more than a week.

One of which is Dr Jones' Aneurin Bevan health board, which has had no critical care patients for eight days, while the Swansea Bay and Cwm Taf Morgannwg health boards have not had any for 13 days.

The number of people in critical care is a third of the total at the same time a year ago.

The Welsh government is hoping to lift Covid restrictions on face masks and self-isolation by the end of March, with free testing ending in June.

But Dr Jones told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast she thought masks and free testing should remain in place.

She said: "Personally, if they remove restrictions, I will continue to wear masks in indoor public places.

"I don't want to catch Covid, I don't want to end up being off work and not able to do my job, so I think that's the concern for a lot of us now.

"We're not so worried about ending up hospitalised and dying... but we are concerned about the kind of disruption to normal life that it would cause."

She added free testing was a "key piece" to give people "the ability to act sensibly".