1,400 in hospital with covid – however “fewer than 20% are there because of coronavirus”

COVID-19 related patients in hospitals are at the highest level for a year, with the First Minister saying it was “inevitable” that wider hospital services are being affected because there are so many beds unavailable because of COVID.

The First Minister also detailed as a result of higher rates currently, “the risk of catching it in hospital increases and there are more people who would be working in our health and care services who are themselves not able to be in the workplace because they are ill with coronavirus”.

The detail emerged with the First Minister being asked about impact of coronavirus on hospitals currently.

The First Minister said, “There is more than one form of harm from Coronavirus, it isn’t just the direct harm from people falling ill and long COVID and the loss of life that we have seen.

“It does have that impact on the ability of the NHS to do everything else we want it to do. When you have 1400 people in hospital beds who have coronavirus there’s no denying the fact that it does have an impact on the ability of the system to do everything else we will want it to do.

“The good news is is that while the BA.2 variant is more transmissible even than the original Omicron wave, we’re not seeing a growth in the number of people needing intensive care. So the very serious end of his illness has been very effectively mitigated by vaccination and other treatments that are now available for it.

“So the health service goes on, I think miraculously, given the pressures it has been under and the stress and strain that it causes in the lives of people who work in it, does go on restoring other treatments while dealing with coronavirus itself.

“I think another important point to make is that while we have 1400 beds occupied by people with coronavirus, fewer than 20% are there because of coronavirus. More than eight out of ten people are there who’ve got some other condition for which they are being treated and they have coronavirus as well.

“So the health service is dealing with all of that, and challenging as it is, I think the ground is very slowly being gained in dealing both with coronavirus and restoring the other treatments that are so important to people.”

The above graph was also presented, with it noted “The latest results from the ONS Coronavirus infection survey suggests around 1 in 16 people in Wales had Coronavirus, today a week later than that ONS survey we think that might be as high as 1 in 12.”