First Minister explains reasons behind spike in North Wales coronavirus cases amid public concern

The First Minister of Wales has said the growing number of coronavirus cases in North Wales is likely down to extra testing in care homes and similar settings.

At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in March, Mark Drakeford outlined how most tests were taking place in the south east of Wales as hot spots emerged in areas like Gwent.

By early April, the north was still witnessing less than 500 tests per week. However, over the last few weeks, the region has seen the number of confirmed cases of the virus rise as testing activity became more focused here.

The raw information has caused some concern among the public with little commentary placed around it to provide context.

More details emerged towards the end of this week as Dr Giri Shankar from Public Health Wales told the BBC it did not necessarily mean that there is a higher level of infection.

He added the rate per 100,000 of the population and mortality data supported the view that North Wales is comparable to other locations – a point Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board has also been keen to stress

We are the largest Health Board in #Wales with almost a quarter of the Welsh population living in our area. To compare numbers of #COVID19 cases or deaths, it is important to look at the number per 100,000 population rather than total numbers. #northwales https://t.co/nBJoeqGKze

— Betsi Cadwaladr (@BetsiCadwaladr) June 6, 2020

Yesterday, North.Wales spoke to the First Minister about the data and highlighted how the leader of Conwy Council had pointed to the demographics of his authority area to explain some of the information.

We asked if more localised data could be provided to expand on the reasons behind the growth in confirmed cases, including how many are in care homes and hospital settings.

Mr Drakeford said: “Conwy and Denbighshire’s position is partly a reflection of the fact that there are more care homes concentrated in that middle part of North Wales, either to the east or the west of it.

“It’s very important just to explain to people that through testing we are finding more positive cases, quite a lot of the positive cases we are finding in care homes are people who have no symptoms at all.

“So to say that there are so many positive cases does not equal there are that number of people who are seriously ill.

“Quite a large number of people who are testing positive are people who didn’t even know, who did not report any symptoms or anything. So there’s a few subtleties in it.

“A positive test, and a raising number of positive tests, doesn’t mean that there’s a lot more people feeling the serious end of this virus.”

We also asked the First Minister if more testing should have been carried out across the whole of Wales from the start.

Mr Drakeford said: “I think you’d have had to do an awful lot of tests in North Wales to find that there wasn’t much coronavirus around there, because in the early days, the coronavirus was very much concentrated in the south east Wales corner.

“It was not the case that coronavirus was everywhere in Wales and we tested for it in one place. We concentrated our testing where the virus itself was most in circulation.

“We have since switched much more testing capacity into North Wales as the virus has arrived. More tests have been carried out in the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board area than any of the health boards in Wales.

“I mean that is no surprise, as it has a bigger population than any other board in Wales, and you would expect more tests there.

“What we’ve tried to do is to match the tests we’ve got to where the need was, early in the pandemic in Wales, the need was very much concentrated in the Aneurin Bevan health board area.

“As the pattern of the disease has changed, so the pattern of testing has changed, and we are now doing more testing in North Wales than anywhere else.”