Covid in Wales: What do the stats tell us?
What can statistics tell us about coronavirus in Wales?
Here we update some of the key weekly and monthly data for measuring the pandemic and also assess some of the key Covid-19 indicators over the past two years.
We are now at a "Covid stable" stage of the pandemic, but a watch is still being kept on infection estimates and the numbers of people being admitted to hospital and deaths as we head towards the winter.
One in 55 people - 55,900 - were estimated to have had Covid in the past week, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
1.84% of the population - more than the 43,400 estimated in the previous week.
It follows six successive weeks of falling infections and a week when the trend was uncertain.
Since summer 2020, the ONS has organised a weekly nose and throat swab survey involving thousands of households across Wales, which now sees people being sent test kits by post.
It has become the most important tool to measure the level of infections, with the end of mass testing at the end of March.
Infections are estimated to be rising in England and Scotland and uncertain in Northern Ireland.
mates are that one in 50 people in England and Scotland and one in 45 in Northern Ireland have the virus.
Wales is estimated to have a fewer proportion of people with Covid than any other UK nation and all English regions, apart from the West Midlands and East Midlands.
mates show infections are highest in people in their early 30s. ONS says infections have decreased in those aged about 60 years and over in recent weeks and the trend was uncertain in younger adults and children.
umber of hospital patients testing positive for Covid by 13 December has risen in the past week - the highest point in more than a month and higher than the same point in the winter season a year ago. 
Few patients testing positive are being "actively" treated for Covid although these numbers have started to rise a little.
We know about 88% of people are currently being treated primarily for other conditions and happen to test positive while in hospital or on admission. 
umber of patients testing positive for Covid in hospital beds in Wales averaged 341 a day in the week to 13 December - up by more than a third on the week before.
Of these, there were an average of 299 in acute beds, compared with 219 the week before, so a rise of 37%.
majority continue to be "incidental" Covid patients, who happen to test positive in hospital, although the proportion has risen in the last week.
Only 59 (15%) of confirmed Covid patients in acute beds on 13 December were being primarily treated for the virus, with 323 patients in hospital being treated for other conditions.
When we include patients with suspected Covid and those recovering, there were 596 people on average in hospital beds over the past week - 15% up on the week before. They make up 6.7% of all hospital patients.
re were an average of 232 patients recovering in the week ending 13 December, so they were no longer testing positive for Covid but were  waiting for discharge or for a care package to become available.
ressures on hospitals.
Numbers in critical care with Covid are averaging 12 a day, roughly the same as we have seen for the past two months but slightly up on the week.
re are 14 times more non-Covid patients in critical care than patients with the virus.   
In April, there were 27 Covid patients in critical care, peaking at 38 in January, while in the second wave it peaked at 150 patients.
mortality rate of critical care Covid patients, in the most recent study of 286 Welsh patients since January 2022, was about 32.9%, including those who died later on a general ward.
About 69% had been discharged from hospital. The study also showed patients admitted in the past year who survived are spending less time in critical care than earlier in the pandemic. 
rage age of those admitted so far in 2022 is 58, just over half are men and they are likely to be overweight. More than half are from more deprived parts of Wales. About 29% were under 50.
udy, at a UK level, showed 61% of those Covid patients in critical care were unvaccinated in December 2021.
Numbers of admissions of people testing positive for Covid are averaging 11 a day, a similar number to November.
Covid-positive patients only make up 1.1% of all admissions.
About 12% of patients in acute hospital beds with Covid were being primarily or "actively" treated for the virus on average in the past week. 
rage number has been 35 in the most recent week, compared to 18 in the previous week.
It does not mean these patients cannot have complications because of Covid and it can still present challenges for patient management.
Broken down by health board, Cardiff and Vale, Cwm Taf Morgannwg and Swansea Bay recorded notable numbers of patients testing positive who were being treated "actively" for Covid in the past week.
re has been a higher proportion of patients with Covid being treated primarily for the virus in critical care - and that was 11 out of 14 acute patients on 13 December.
Icnarc intensive care study has found a far smaller proportion of critical care patients with Covid were being primarily treated for the virus after January 2022 (27%), compared to the period before (nearly 86%).
figures on "incidental" Covid cases have only been published in recent months.
Digital Health and Care Wales indicated the data had no standard definition for "actively being treated for Covid", meaning there were some differences between health boards in how they arrived at the figure.
Patients who are asymptomatic are no longer being tested routinely.
re were 309 positive tests for Covid in hospitals in the week ending 11 December, the most since the end of October.
Public Health Wales figures show in the latest week,  "probably" or "definitely" hospital-acquired cases in patients outnumber those community-acquired or indeterminate Covid cases. 
Hospital-acquired infections stood at 189, double the previous week.
re have been about 16,840 hospital-acquired infections recorded since the start of the pandemic.
An indication of pressure on the NHS is overall bed occupancy in acute hospitals, which hit a high of 95% in the week ending 26 October.
It has slipped back slightly in the last month to 93.6%.
We know also that recent modelling from Welsh government scientists suggests in a "worst case" scenario that Covid, flu and other respiratory conditions could account for 2,750 hospital beds - or 28% of total capacity at the winter peak in 2022-23.
"most likely" scenario had been for 1,390 patients with Covid, flu and other respiratory conditions on 9 December, including 668 with confirmed positive tests for Covid.
Currently, figures for hospital bed occupancy across respiratory conditions shows around 580 patients with flu, RSV or Covid in the week ending 11 December.
ge ranges for flu patients was fairly evenly split with two thirds under 65 in the latest week. 
Just under half of RSV hospitalisations were the over 65s but 41% were in under fours, reflecting the high intensity of cases in children in the community.
Modelling for Covid alone peaked at more than 1,800 patients with the virus in a "worst case scenario" in December.
But the actual curve for patients with Covid positive tests has fallen even below the "most likely" scenario and was closer to the "optimistic" scenario after being above the predicted levels until early November.
Scientific advisers with a more up to date projection at the end of November suggested hospital bed occupancy with Covid would continue to decline to December and reach a plateau in the following weeks. A slight increase in Covid admissions was projected towards the end of January and February.
Another measure of pressure on the health service is NHS staff absence.
A total of 0.8% of staff - about 861 - were absent due to Covid-related sickness in the week to 12 December. Another 0.2% of staff were having to self-isolate, according to the bi-monthly Welsh government figures. This does not include NHS Wales staff absent for other reasons. 
6.3%, a little higher than the usual pre-pandemic figure of about 5%.
quarterly average to June was 6.6%, down from 7.2% in the three months to March, which was the second highest rate on record.
fection survey from the Office for National Statistics suggests 95.9% of adults in Wales have some protection from antibodies - through vaccination or immunity following infection.
All UK nations are close to or at 96%-97%.
mate is 98% of 16 to 24-year-olds in Wales would have tested positive for antibodies, although it falls to 92.4% for those aged 60 to 64. 
At the higher threshold, 73.4% of adults in Wales are at or above 800 nanograms per millilitre and well over 77.6% in those aged 16 to 24 and 91.6% of the 75-79 age group.
As part of its weekly swab survey, involving many thousands of people across the UK, some participants also have their level of antibodies checked in a blood test and are also asked a series of other questions towards fact-finding about Covid.
Scientific advisers to the Welsh government said 0.6% of people aged 12 and over were estimated to be at risk of going to hospital with Covid at the start of April 2022, compared with 9.3% two years before, at the start of the pandemic.
And for those at-risk groups, 6% were estimated to be at risk of needing hospital treatment and 7% of the over 60s.
ks to vaccination and natural protection from immunity after having infection.
rate at which GPs are consulted about Covid-19 is also another indicator, which peaked in the first week of January 2022 at 98 consultations per 100,000 and has now fallen back to around two per 100,000. 
-called R-number - the reproduction number - has been a tool to express the infection rate of Covid.
Expressed within a range, if it's above 1, this indicates that infections are growing. 
range remains between 0.8 and 1, suggesting infections are falling. So, for every 10 people with Covid in Wales, between another eight and 10 people would be infected.
umber of people who have died when Covid was a contributory factor has reached 11,128 in Wales, for registrations so far.
In the most recent week, up to 2 December, 17 people in Wales had a death registered which involved Covid-19 and saw it included as a contributory factor on their death certificate, according to the ONS.
milar number to the previous week.
re were no Covid deaths in 14 local authorities, including across the Hywel Dda health board area in mid and west Wales for the first week since August last year.
re were five deaths in Swansea - four of these involved care home residents - and three in Neath Port Talbot.
re were three deaths also in Cardiff, two in Caerphilly and others in Anglesey, Bridgend, Torfaen and Wrexham.
When counted by day occurring - not day registered - there were 16 deaths involving Covid in the past week registered so far, compared to 13 in the previous week.
However, the most recent weekly figures are usually an underestimate, due to delays in registrations catching up.
Up to 2 December, a total of 11,094 deaths involving Covid have occurred during the pandemic in Wales.
ONS says that up to the end of October, of deaths registered so far, there have been 9,199 deaths due to Covid, with the virus the underlying cause of death.
Deaths involving Covid are running lower than at the same point in 2021, with the total number of deaths involving Covid 46% of what we saw up to 2 December in 2021.
re were 27 deaths between 18-19 July 2022, the most since January. This was at the height of the summer heatwave.
Omicron wave from December 2021 brought a peak in deaths of 20 on 15 January 2022, the same level as the peaks in deaths in September and October.
ONS measure includes deaths in people's homes, hospices and other settings, as well as hospitals and care homes.
During 2021, there were 4,029 deaths involving Covid, of those registered up to now.
udes 209 deaths in December 2021. In December 2020, there were 1,333 deaths involving Covid.
wave in the winter brought 83 deaths on 11 January 2021 alone - the worst single day during the pandemic in Wales.
ONS also records so-called "excess deaths". This has been seen as a useful measure of the pandemic's impact because it looks at deaths from all causes overall, compared with the five-year, non-pandemic average.
So since March 2020, there have been 8,285 more deaths than we might expect to see on average.
udes nearly 1,290 excess deaths in 2022 so far.
re have been 1,167 deaths from all causes above the non-pandemic average since July with 481 of them not involving Covid (41%).
Deaths have been above the five-year pre-pandemic norm for all but two of the last 26 weeks.
re were 730 deaths from all causes - this is 59 more (8.8%) than the average in the most recent week. 
Covid accounted for 2.3% of all deaths in Wales in the latest week, less than the proportion in England (2.8%).
Across England and Wales, in nearly two thirds (61.8%) of deaths with Covid mentioned on the death certificate, it was also the underlying cause of death in the latest week.
Nearly a fifth (18.2%) of all Covid deaths registered have occurred in care homes.
re were five deaths involving Covid involving a care home resident registered in the latest week - out of 128 deaths overall.
Care Inspectorate Wales reports that deaths peaked in May 2020 and said it has been notified of 2,251 care home resident deaths with suspected or confirmed Covid since the pandemic began.
It had been notified of four deaths involving Covid during November.
ONS analysis of deaths in care homes in 2021 found mortality rates lower in Wales in men than in England or any English region.
Covid was the second highest cause of death in care home residents after dementia, accounting for 12.9% of male resident deaths and 11.1% of female resident deaths.
Covid-19 was the seventh leading cause of death in Wales in October, after being the 10th leading cause in September.
Mortality analysis by the ONS showed deaths due to Covid - 103 in total occurred over the month - accounted for 3.5% of all registered deaths. It was 3.3% of all deaths in England in October.
Looking at when Covid was a contributory factor, there were 147 deaths involving Covid in Wales - or 4.9% of all deaths registered in October.
Dementia was the leading cause of death in September in Wales for the third month in succession. 
Flu and pneumonia again ranked sixth, ahead of Covid, with its mortality rate for a second month in succession.
mortality rate for symptoms, signs, and ill-defined conditions was significantly higher (58.3%) than the five-year average, according to ONS.
Covid, which was the second leading cause of death in Wales after heart disease throughout 2021, is now the sixth leading cause of death so far in 2022, after heart disease, dementia, chronic lower respiratory diseases, lung and throat cancers and strokes.
It is significantly lower than the five leading causes of death.
Flu and pneumonia is still ranked seventh so far in 2022.
ONS, which takes into account population and age structure, found the mortality rate for deaths due to Covid in Wales in October was 34.6 deaths per 100,000 - an increase on September's figure. 
Across the course of the pandemic, the age-standardised mortality rate for deaths involving Covid is about the same in Wales (120 deaths per 100,000), as England on 119.7 deaths per 100,000, with Scotland (111) and Northern Ireland (110.8) both lower in the 32 months to the end of October.
ge-standardised mortality rate due to Covid - with Covid the underlying cause of death - is slightly higher in England than in Wales.
It is also higher in all English regions apart from south west, south east and east England.
When a crude mortality rate, not adjusting for the age or population profile, is used, deaths are higher in Wales.
ONS also looks at how deaths are registered on certificates and found Covid was the underlying cause of death - not just a contributory factor - in 70.1% of Covid deaths mentioned by doctors on death certificate in Wales in October. 
It has been as high as 94% and on average since the start of the pandemic, 83.7% of deaths with Covid on death certificates can be said to be due to Covid since the pandemic began.
So, there were 9,199 deaths due to Covid by the end of October in Wales, 54% of them male.
In about 4% of these deaths, the doctor had written that Covid was "suspected".
A doctor's duties include certifying deaths, and this can include any cause in a chain of events leading up to them, including pre-existing conditions and whatever medically makes a contribution. 
Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) has the highest mortality rate over the course of the pandemic in Wales.
By 2 December, RCT had reached a total of 1,143 deaths and also had the eighth highest crude mortality rate (480.9 deaths per 100,000) of all local authorities across England and Wales.
Merthyr Tydfil (476.2 deaths per 100,000) was the ninth highest and Bridgend 15th (459.1 deaths per 100,000).
RCT has overtaken Cardiff (1,137) for the most deaths in Wales up to 2 December.
Six of RCT's communities were also in the highest 20 within Wales during the first and second waves, when the death rates can be broken down further.
At a health board level, the age-standardised mortality rate for Cwm Taf Morgannwg, which covers RCT, Merthyr and Bridgend, was 153.3 deaths per 100,000 due to Covid in the pandemic up to the end of October 2022. 
ghest in Wales, the lowest being 63.9 deaths due to Covid in the Powys health board area, set against a Welsh average of 100.4.
mmunity with the highest number of Covid deaths across 2020 and 2021, including in the first two waves of the pandemic, was Tonyrefail West, with a total of 63 deaths due to Covid.
was followed by Sandfields in Port Talbot and Porth East and Ynyshir in Rhondda Cynon Taf (55 deaths each), by the end of 2021.
When translated into mortality rates, based on population size, Gwersyllt West and Summerhill in Wrexham was the highest at 742.6 deaths per 100,000 - or 44 deaths over the two years.
was followed by Tonyrefail West, Port Talbot East and Llanelli Bigyn in Carmarthenshire.
All communities of Wales have now had at least two deaths during the pandemic.
west number of deaths at a community level were in Aberystwyth North and Aberystwyth South, Bangor City and Llandudno Junction South and Llasanffraid Glan Conwy.
At a local authority level, in the second wave of the pandemic, Bridgend was the worst-hit area in Wales.
In 2021, Bridgend had the highest Covid mortality rate - 271 deaths or 183.2 deaths per 100,000; this was the 24th highest area across England and Wales.
ONS and public health bodies are measuring things in a different way so do not expect to see the same thing:
fferent measures for looking at deaths involving Covid-19 in Wales
Public Health Wales' daily updates on its online dashboard show numbers of deaths and positive tests for coronavirus:
graphic above shows how it looks when you compare figures from the different data sources - and how there is a difference between ONS and PHW. There is also a similar count used by the UK government, which takes the PHW statistics and involves people who died within 28 days of a first positive test for Covid.
re is a difference of about 3,000 deaths.
According to the PHW measure, by 14 December there had been a total of 8,081 deaths with Covid, with 13 deaths being reported in the most recent week.
PHW has now switched to only weekly reporting.
We do not know how many of these people have died of Covid, only that they tested positive in the weeks before they died.
With the large number of "incidental" Covid cases in hospital during the Omicron wave, it is a less reliable measure to use day to day.
More than 8.5m doses of vaccine have been administered in Wales since December 2020.
majority in the last week have been autumn boosters, with the programme running at around 5,000 a day, a drop on recent weeks.
So far, more than a million autumn boosters have been given out, reaching more than 86% of care home residents and nearly 79% of over 65s. 
More than half of those aged 50 to 64 have also had autumn boosters.
Wales has reached proportionately more of key groups with autumn boosters than England, although fewer than Scotland so far.
re are also fewer of the key groups reached than the earlier phases of the programme.
rs were reaching fewer elderly people from black and ethnic minorities, with the gap widest in the over 80s - just 40% compared to 54% of white over 80s by early October.
Ceredigion had reached fewest of the over 65s but still over 68% and Vale of Glamorgan had reached the most (86.4%).
Monmouthshire has reached the most in the 50s to 64 age group (67.6%) with Torfaen the fewest (33%).
revious booster campaign saw 85% of those eligible being given a dose.
Public Health Wales is now only reporting Covid vaccination figures weekly.
Meanwhile, 69% of the over 65s have so far had a flu vaccine - the same time as this time last year. Fewer two and three year olds have had the vaccine since this time last year.
minant variant in Wales has been Omicron in 2022, and 1,030 new cases have been sequenced in the last month.
Because of the ending of mass testing in April, we should not expect to see the same numbers of results going off for sequencing any more.
So far, 29,222 cases of a sub-variant of Omicron, BA.2, have been recorded in Wales but very few cases in recent months.
It overtook the "original" Omicron in all areas of Wales but this sub-variant itself has been overtaken by other sub-variants, especially BA.5.
re have been 88 cases of the new sub-variant BQ.1 again in the last week - related to the BA.5 strain.
Infection estimates by ONS suggest BA.5 overtook the BA.1 strain in early March, while the following BA.4 and BA.5 strains overtook BA.2 in the second week of June in Wales.
Health officials say the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants are six times more transmissible than the original Wuhan Covid strain but that vaccines were still working to prevent serious illness in most people.
umbers of people who are reporting they have long Covid symptoms in Wales a year after being infected are estimated to be at record levels. 
re are 61,000 people -  or 2% of the population - who are estimated to still be suffering symptoms 12 months or more since having Covid.
A total of 114,000 people were estimated to have long Covid at any duration. Of these, more than half said long Covid had a "little" impact on their daily lives, and 24% said none at all but 20% said it had "a lot" of impact.
An estimated 3.73% of people in Wales report having Covid - this is the same as in Scotland, lower than in Northern Ireland but higher than all regions of England except North West and North East.
mates are based on a sample size of 14,223 people in Wales.
Across the UK, prevalence was greatest in the 50 to 69 age group, in women, and in people living in deprived areas.
A survey of more than 1,600 people with long Covid in Wales referred to the Adferiad recovery programme found around 70% were female and half were aged over 50.
Of those needing follow-up, around a quarter had hospital treatment. Average stays were around two weeks.
Fatigue, "brain fog" and shortness of breath were the most common symptoms.
Scientific advisers for the Welsh government estimate that potentially up to a quarter of people who have Covid may develop long Covid.
In January 2022, this would have included far higher proportions of Covid cases involving people aged between 50 and 70 - an estimated 43% of those with Covid.
But even if 6% of young people under 25 with Covid developed long-term symptoms, this could still mean more than 2,200 young people with long Covid in Wales.
was used to develop a "social cost" estimate for Covid, which looked at the cost to the NHS of treating Covid at different stages of the pandemic.
With the effects of the vaccine, and less patient time in hospital and intensive care, it meant this estimated cost had fallen from £21,000 per case in the second wave of the pandemic to £5,769 per case by January 2022.
Of this, more than £4,800 per case would be the cost of long Covid.
When we look at infections in communities, broken down into middle-layer super output areas, with populations averaging 5,000, there has generally a split between rural and more urban areas.
when we look at a map of community case rates for the whole pandemic, taking into account population sizes.
Wales positivity rate was around 12% in early-November - but there are far fewer PCR tests after the end of mass testing in April.
At the peak of the Omicron wave at the end of 2021, the positivity rate reached 51.6%.
Locally, Neath Port Talbot over the course of the whole pandemic had the highest positivity rate (18.8%) and Ceredigion the lowest.
Earlier in the pandemic, a 5% positivity threshold was suggested by the World Health Organisation as an indicator that infections were too high.
re was a much younger profile to cases in the third wave in the latter half of 2021.
Between January and March there was a rise in proportions of those aged 20 to 40 testing positive. 
In terms of PCR tests, the 20 to 40 age group made up more than 41% of positive results this winter.
In the most recent week, the 40 to 59 year age group still had the highest incidence for lateral flow test positives. 
All of Wales' 22 council areas saw falls in their under-25 case rates in the last week of figures, which included the period when mass testing ended. 
30 to 39 age group had the largest proportion of cases in the last, most reliable week for PCR tests.
Over the winter months, the under-19 age group has made up 20% of cases, a rise on the year before.
More than 8.7 million Covid-19 tests have been carried out during the pandemic, with the first positive result recorded in Swansea on 27 February 2020.
For most of the first wave, testing was confined to hospitals and some care homes but mass testing became available in the spring of 2020.
rt of April 2022, although it will remain in place for hospital patients and there will be some for vulnerable people and those with symptoms in care homes.
re are around 4,500 PCR tests currently taking place each week, compared to around 200,000 a week at the pandemic's peak.
g that's processed privately - at so-called Lighthouse labs - is no longer taking place.
Free lateral flow tests (LFTs) are no longer available, except to certain groups and in certain settings.
From the summer of 2021, and with the easing of restrictions, they had been used more for asymptomatic people going to work or attending events.
ween April and July 2022, people with symptoms were asked to take LFTs.
umber reporting tests had been falling as a result of the end of freely-available LFT kits but after a short rise numbers have fallen again.
most recent week saw the lowest weekly total so far with 9,221 results, with 1,466 positive.
Up to the end of routine testing in April 2022, about 17,000 PCR tests routinely took place in hospitals each week and up to 30,000 weekly in care homes. 
re have also now been changes to guidance for Covid testing in hospitals, although patients will still be tested before admission or ahead of surgery or chemotherapy.
Since the end of mass testing, only about 4,000-5,000 PCR tests are being carried out each week.
Altogether, around 32,500 positive results were recorded in care homes over the course of the routine testing programme from autumn 2020.
Care home staff no longer need to take a weekly PCR test, while free lateral flow tests will only be provided in limited circumstances.
Care Inspectorate Wales figures also show 26 care homes in Wales have notified one or more confirmed cases of Covid in the last week.
School absences for Covid-related reasons are no longer being recorded. 
We saw over the 2021-22 academic year, 69.1% of pupils missed at least half a day's schooling because of Covid.
Meanwhile, absence in general was much higher than in previous years - running at an average of 11% in primary-aged pupils and 16.3% in secondary-aged children during the 2021-22 academic year.
was more than twice the absence rate in pre-pandemic years.
Analysis of these figures showed 10% were persistently absent - and this rose to 21% of those from poorer backgrounds.
In the financial year ending in March 2021, the first year of the pandemic, spending on infectious diseases in the NHS in Wales jumped by £373 million.
worked out at £156 per person in Wales, or just under 6% of all NHS Wales spending.
g of treating patients with Covid and managing the virus was put at £628m. Spending also included field hospitals and operating the track and trace system.