The rate of coronavirus reproduction in Wales appears to be higher than in several parts of England, the latest estimates have shown.
The department of health in England published the latest official estimate of 'R' - the rate at which coronavirus is spreading - on its website on Friday for the whole of the UK and the regions of England.
Across the UK, the 'R' number is estimated at being between 0.7 and 0.9 according to the UK Government, meaning that the number of infections is falling.
Wales does not publish the 'R' number as a matter of course but we went to the Welsh Government and asked it for the latest official estimate from the UK's pandemic modelling body SPI-M - whose research informs the scientific advice given to the governments in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England by their chief medical officials.
The 'R' rate is calculated by several different by several independent modelling groups based in universities and public health bodies - which is why you may see a range of different figures circulating on the internet.
However all of these bodies discuss their individual R estimates at the Science Pandemic Influenza Modelling group (SPI-M) - and then the group collectively agrees a range for which the values are very likely to be within.
When approached by WalesOnline, the Welsh Government said the the latest R rate in Wales estimated by the SPI-M group is between 0.7 and 1.0 with a central estimate of 0.9.
This is higher than England, where it is estimated to be between 0.7 and 0.9 and higher than in Scotland. The latest rate for Scotland was estimated at being between 0.6 and 0.8 on June 17.
Follow live updates on the coronavirus outbreak across the UK in our dedicated blog.
This table shows the R number for the regions of England:
So why is Wales higher?
Last week WalesOnline ran a story where the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Disease (CMMID) estimated that the R rate had fallen in Wales to between 0.5 and 0.8 - with a most likely mid point of 0.7 as of May 29.
This gave Wales a lower rate of reproduction than any part of the UK. Which was to be expected with our stricter lockdown measures.
According to the Welsh Government the reason for the now seemingly higher R rate is that cases in Wales are now very low.
For example across the whole country the amount of people in ICU from the virus is below 40. This means there is a smaller sample size to draw the R rate from, making that number more volitale.
One Welsh Government official told WalesOnline that once cases are very low, the R rate become a "blunt instrument".
They said that "it is better to have a very low number of cases and higher R rate, than a higher number of cases and a slightly lower R rate.
With the new changes to the lockdown coming in Monday, this R rate, and other key indicators like GP visits and hospital admittance will be monitored closely.
The other measure that is used to look at the spread of coronavirus is the growth rate, which is currently estimated at being between -4% and -2% for the while of the UK.
The growth rate reflects how quickly the number of infections are changing day-by-day. The reason for the two figures is that R only tells scientists how many people one person with the virus will infect. It does not tell them how quickly this will happen.
Thus while R tells scientists the direction of change, the growth rate tells them the speed of change.
