THE FIRST MINISTER Mark Drakeford has said he is ‘hopeful’ figures in Wales could start to reduce from around two weeks’ time.
The comments came during the live briefing held yesterday lunchtime in Cardiff, with the First Minister referring to modelling several times and comparing it to what has been recorded in firm figures.
The First Minister said of the above slide, “It shows you how the modelling that we’ve had done for us here in Wales shows how the Omicron wave wave is expected to behave. The blue line shows how cases are predicted to grow over the coming weeks. The black line shows the actual confirmed cases.
“As you can see, the actual cases are following very closely the predicted wave, and what the wave shows is the speed at which the Omicron wave will break over us and then how cases decline at a relatively rapid rate as well.
“Now we haven’t reached the peak of that wave yet, it could be within the next 10 to 14 days. But we will get to the top of the wave and then hopefully we will see the numbers reducing again here in Wales.
“The latest figures show that there are more than 2300 cases per 100,000 people across Wales. Cases are highest amongst 20- to 39-year-olds but we are also now seeing rises in older age groups. As community transmission increases rapidly, while the figures are clearly concerning, they are in line with what the modelling forecasts told us.”
“Every close contact is an opportunity for it to spread.”
Data was also released on the number of people to being admitted to hospital with coronavirus, “The latest figures show that there are now a total of 994, just under 1000, COVID-19 patients in our hospitals in Wales and that is a 43% increase on a single week and that number is the highest we have seen in Welsh hospitals since March of last year”.
“There are now around 40 people are so ill in hospital that they have to receive critical care and the majority of those people are people who have not been vaccinated. Very sadly since just the start of this year, public health Wales has reported 38 New deaths from coronavirus.”
When asked about reversing restrictions, and what timeframes could be involved, the First Minister said, “As people will have seen from the model that we showed earlier, the position over the next 10 days to two weeks is not going to be one that is easing.
“The numbers are likely to continue to rise. So it will not be until we have past the peak of infections and we are sure that we can see the pressures on the spread of this virus in the community are beginning to reduce, and will then take a while as it always does to feed through into reducing pressure on health services, hospital services, critical care services.
“So I don’t anticipate that over the next fortnight we will be in a position to move away from the level of restrictions we currently have in place. But, we will track it every day. We will review it every week. And when we see that corner being turned and we can see the number as we hope coming down reasonably rapidly. That will be the point at which we will be able to assess when it is safe to begin to lift the extra restrictions and protections we put in place so far.”
