The omicron variant is now dominant in England, Wales and Scotland and has driven up infection rates to record levels across all three nations.
There's a general consensus that rates in Wales are around one to two weeks behind the surge seen in London over Christmas.
It's encouraging then to see that nearly all local authorities in Wales are now seeing a fall in their infection rate. Read more here.
Is it too soon to say the omicron wave has peaked? Are there are other factors at play that are masking the true picture of Covid in Wales? And should we be looking at other data rather than just daily case numbers?
Firstly, let's look at just the daily cases in Wales: positive cases are only included in the main case data if they test positive by PCR. The latest seven-day infection rate, based on the seven days up to January 5 is 1,997 - a significant drop on 2,215 recorded on Sunday. The infection rate has now fallen for two days consecutively. Given those two days of figures cover the data from Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the infection rate has been falling for 72 hours.
Is this as good news as it appears or are there other factors at play? Firstly, the change in Wales' policy on testing for coronavirus in the last week will not have had an impact in the figures yet.
It is no longer a requirement for asymptomatic individuals to take a follow up PCR test following a positive LFT. That means fewer people will test positive using a PCR test, which will be reflected in the latest daily case data. PHW estimates this will shave around 10% off the total cases being reported.
However that change only came in on January 6. The infection rate data we report on Monday covers the week to January 4. So the apparent drop in the infection rate is likely to be unaffected by this.
However, the data will still be affected by the Christmas and New Year period, which will have influenced the number of people coming forward for testing.
There's no doubt that the number of people getting themselves tested over the Christmas period significantly increased as they made decisions about whether it was safe to travel or not.
But there are other indicators that suggest the Omicron wave of cases may have peaked. It's clear to see in the graph above that positivity rates in Wales shot up during the week before Christmas, hitting nearly 60% on Christmas Day. That means six in every 10 people getting tested were coming back positive. On December 29, more than 32,000 tests were carried out in just one day. This has since dropped off during the first week of 2022 almost as quickly as it rose. It's inevitable that, with more people testing than might not have done so, then more cases will be captured.
Can the apparent drop in infection rate in Wales be attributed to the restrictions that came in on Boxing Day then? They've now been in place for two weeks and their effect should be filtering through by now, even if you take into account peoples' modified behaviour over Christmas.
This is how Wales compares to England and Scotland. At first glance it's difficult to see if the restrictions in Wales have had a major impact.
Across all four home nations, circa three million cases were reported in the last three weeks - the same as in the whole 12 weeks before that. But while cases and positivity rates are at record highs in all nations, the data is not directly comparable.
Firstly, England does not include reinfections in the daily case data, unlike in Wales which reports reinfections of Covid-19 as long as they’re 42 days apart.
Public Health Wales confirmed it does not currently report episodes of coronavirus reinfection separately from the overall case episode numbers but added: "Work is currently underway to develop a method to report on coronavirus reinfections in a systematic way, this is likely to take some weeks to conclude."
That means people who’ve already had Covid could now have omicron but are going unreported in the English data. Data indicates that there were over 140,000 reinfections in England in the last two weeks and these are not on the daily dashboard, although there are plans to include them in the coming weeks. You could therefore expect the Welsh infection rate to be higher than in England.
But England does include positive LFT results in its daily case data, unlike Wales.
What is clear from the above graph is that cases in Wales continued to surge even after the restrictions were introduced which seemed to have little to no impact on case rates for seven days. The infection rate has dropped off sharply from January 2 while in England, rates are also dropping but at a much slower rate. It is still perhaps too early to attribute this decrease to something specific like the restrictions announced by the Welsh First Minister. But it's worth noting all three nations exhibit that same trends despite having different restrictions in place.
Another factor to consider is the ONS infection survey - which is not affected by test capacity - which shows the omicron peak dwarfs previous ones. It's worth noting that Chris Whitty chose to focus on the ONS infection survey data at the latest No. 10 briefing, quoting 1 in 15 infected in England and 1 in 20 infected in Wales.
But with some experts believing that the Covid pandemic will give way to a scenario where Covid is simply endemic within the population, it's perhaps better to look at the number of people in hospitals as a better indicator of the Covid situation.
There's no doubt the number of people in hospital with Covid in the UK is going up sharply and is not that far from the peak in the first wave. But, fewer people are needing intensive care, indicating that omicron is a milder form of the virus. And in addition, while both admissions for and with Covid are rising steeply, the hospital admissions as a percentage of all positive cases is falling. How the infections develop in older groups will be key, as these groups are more likely to go on to need hospital treatment.
Deaths are hard to interpret right now with reporting delays over the holiday period, but they have increased in Wales over the last week or so. With fewer people needing intensive care and many older adults now fully boostered, there's hope that deaths will not increase too much.
Omicron's rise has been very rapid and the variant has shown itself to be very good at infecting vaccinated people - even being boosted only gives you about 40% protection after 10 weeks. According to experts in the independent Sage group, the booster gives 88% protection against hospital admission. This is slightly worse than for the delta variant.
When analysing restrictions and their relative impacts, it's important then to also look at hospital admission data. It can be seen in the graph below that admissions in England and Wales are levelling off - but England is at more than double the level of Wales.
It's clear than that an analysis of the data isn't as linear as using just one measure. With Wales running around 10-14 days behind England, it’s still very much early days for analysis.
Any restrictions introduced by a respective government are unlikely to work immediately - it’s usually 7-10 days before we can start to see any impact.
What we do know is that with staff sickness climbing steeply within the NHS, combined with Covid pressure and a high existing hospital load and social care pressure, many hospitals are in crisis. And with the impact of schools returning still not yet known, it is too early to say that the Omicron wave has peaked.
The Independent Sage group has stated it's too late for a circuit breaker - the time for that was in December they say. Now it's about reducing the "comedown wave"-which is already happening- as fast as possible. One factor that may prolong this is a new school wave. As we've seen during previous waves, different ages will peak at different times.
The risk of "muddling through" is that we face a slow descent, resulting in far too much illness, disruption and prolonged NHS pressure. All four UK nations were unable to slow the growth of Omicron, so the challenge is now to accelerate its decline.
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