Wales has highest number of new Covid-19 cases per population on earth, data tracker shows

Wales has the highest number of recorded Covid cases per population on earth, according to the Financial Times’ coronavirus tracking tool.

The data tracking tool shows that Wales, which has a seven day rolling average of 105.9 cases per 100,000, yesterday outstripped Lithuania in second place which is on 99.9.

The United Kingdom as a whole has 43.6 cases per 100,000.

Wales is however far outstripped by Slovenia, Croatia and other countries on the numbers of daily deaths. Wales has 1.1 deaths per 100,000 compared with 2.22 for Slovenia.

There was some underreporting of Covid-19 cases by Public Health Wales between 9 and 15 December due to planned IT maintenance, which were then published on 17 December as 11,000 new cases, which may have impacted the seven day rolling average.

The Welsh Government have also ramped up Covid-19 testing in recent weeks, with two parts of Wales seeing mass testing pilots: Merthyr Tydfil and the lower Cynon valley.

First Minister Mark Drakeford yesterday confirmed that over 600 people in Wales have tested positive for the new aggressive variant of COVID-19 but warned the true number of infections is likely to be much higher.

On Saturday new restrictions were announced in Wales and across the rest of the UK due to the rapid spread of the new strain, which was first detected in the southeast of England in September.

The variant is believed to be to 70% more transmissible than the original virus and scientists have predicted it could increase the R number, which indicates if an epidemic is growing or shrinking – by up to 0.4.