Covid: Wales' hospital admissions lowest for nine months

Patients with Covid in hospital are down 50% on a month ago

Hospital Covid admissions in Wales have dropped to their lowest levels for nine months.

Average daily admissions with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 have dropped to 16 in the week to Wednesday, the lowest daily average since mid-August 2021.

The number of people with Covid in critical care is also down, according to Digital Health and Care Wales.

Figures also show about 80% of patients testing positive for Covid are in hospital for other conditions.

Patients admitted to hospital who test positive or are suspected of having Covid have not been this low in number since last summer.

This is despite infections in the community estimated to be more than five times higher now.

Meanwhile, those Covid patients in critical care or on invasive ventilation are averaging 15 patients a day, down on the average of 22 a week ago - about 40% of the peak we saw in January.

There are about 10 times more non-Covid patients in critical care than patients who have the virus.

The numbers of patients with Covid in hospital beds has averaged 411 a day over the past week - a 15% drop on the previous week and 50% down on a month ago.

But only 67 (21%) of confirmed Covid patients in acute beds on 11 May were being primarily treated for the virus, with 256 in hospital to be treated for other conditions.

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On average in the past week, 79% of patients with Covid were in hospital to be treated for something else.

This has been a feature of the Omicron wave, reflecting the higher but generally milder infections in the community.

But hospitals are still very busy. The bed occupancy rate is close to its mid-March record - with 92.3% of available acute beds full on average.

However, another figure reflecting NHS Wales pressures is continuing to improve. Latest figures show NHS staff sickness related to Covid-19 has fallen to its lowest figure since February.

A total of 1.1% of staff were absent due to Covid-related sickness in the week to 9 May.

Total NHS Wales staff absence stands at 5.8%, the lowest proportion since June last year, and compares to a usual pre-pandemic figure of about 5%.

The most recent data from Office for National Statistics (ONS) - its swab survey of thousands of people in Wales - suggested infections have been dropping for the past three weeks.

The latest mortality figures from ONS show 67 deaths involving Covid were registered in the most recent week. This is slightly down on the week before although registrations have been affected by recent bank holidays.

Although deaths involving Covid are now running higher than at the same point in 2021, the total number of deaths involving Covid so far in 2022 is about a third of the total we had seen by the end of April in 2021.

The Omicron wave from December 2021 brought a peak of 20 deaths on 15 January 2022, the same level as the peaks in deaths in September and October.