Sky News mixes up maps of Wales and Northern Ireland in Covid infection report

Sky News has mixed up maps of Wales and Northern Ireland in a report about Covid-19 infections across the UK.

The British channel shared maps of the four nations of the UK in the broadcast, along with figures of coronavirus rates for each one.

It labelled the map for England and Scotland correctly but did not do so for Wales and Northern Ireland.

In response to the error, Josh Powell said: “@SkyNews please point on a map where Wales is.”

The report included figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS), which showed Wales to have the lowest rates of Covid-19 in the UK at 1 in 210.

This equates to 14,400 people in Wales having the virus the week ending 17 July, or 0.47 of the population, which is an increase of over 70% in the last week.

These figures compare with 1 in 170 in Northern Ireland, which is the second lowest case rate in the UK.

In Northern Ireland the number of people with the virus rose from 6,300 to 10,900 in seven days, accounting for 0.59% of the population.

In Scotland the figure was 1 in 80. This means 65,100 people are estimated to have Covid, up from 60,000 for the week ending 10 July and the equivalent of 1.24% of the population.

‘England’ 

England continues to record the highest infection rates in the UK at 1 in 75. This means 741,700 people within the community population estimated to have the virus over the seven days covered by the latest study.

Cardiff recorded the highest number of new cases in Wales, with 73 since Thursday’s update and there were 61 new infections in Conwy and 56 in both Flintshire and Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Denbighshire continues to have the highest weekly case rate in Wales at 516.2 per 100,000 people, up from 505.8 yesterday and the test positivity rate is also the worst in Wales at 18.8% of every 100,000 tests, a rise of 0.2% since yesterday.