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 week-on-week. However, the virus is still circulating across much of the country. You can get more health news and other Covid updates by subscribing to our coronavirus daily briefing newsletter here.
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Some two million people in private households in the UK are estimated to have had the virus in the week to April 30, or May 1 in Scotland, down 32% from 2.9 million the previous week.
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.
Meanwhile, the latest data from lateral flow tests taken in Wales shows there have been fewer positive tests in the last week, down from 12,194 in the previous week to 7,558 for the week of April 25 to May 1. However, changes to testing requirements, as tests are only available to people with symptoms, mean it is no longer a reliable guide to the pandemic.
Figures from hospitals show that the number of people in acute hospitals being treated for Covid, as opposed to being in hospital for another reason and testing positive for Covid, has remained relatively static in the last week. On May 5 380 'confirmed' patients were 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.
