Latest COVID-19 figures as 'Traffic Lights' plan is announced

On the day that Welsh Government published their 'traffic lights' plans for easing restrictions on life in Wales and getting the country out of lockdown, the latest Public Health Wales figures have been published.

In the past day 126 new cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed with 7 in Conwy and 2 in Denbighshire.

Overall there have been 1,173 deaths including 9 which have been recently reported.

Dr Robin Howe, Incident Director for the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said:

“Public Health Wales welcomes the announcement today by the First Minister of the traffic light roadmap ‘Unlocking our society and economy: continuing the conversation’ which sets out how Wales could exit the coronavirus lockdown.

“In conjunction with the Welsh Government’s ‘Test, Trace, Protect’ strategy published earlier in the week, Public Health Wales will continue to work in  partnership with our communities, the Welsh Government, the wider NHS and local government in Wales to focus on protecting the health of the people of Wales as we support the implementation of the strategy.

“We have been working hard to increase our testing capacity, and as of Monday 11 May 2020 our capacity was at 5,330 tests a day in Wales.  We know there is more to do as demand increases, and we will continue to ramp up this capacity.

“The Welsh Government announced on Friday 8 May that lockdown arrangements would continue in Wales for a further three weeks.  Changes announced by the UK Prime Minister on Sunday 10 May were for England only, and in Wales stay-at-home guidance remains that, wherever you can, you should stay at home.

“Although we appear to have passed the peak of new cases in Wales, Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) is still circulating in every part of the country.  The single most important action we can all take in fighting the virus is to stay at home, and we thank each and every person across Wales for doing their bit to help slow the spread of the virus".