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Wales Online
Wales Online
National
Ruth Mosalski

The R number in Wales may now be as high as 1.4

The R number in Wales could now be as high as 1.4, Wales' health minister has said.

The R number represents the amount of people each person with Covid-19 is infecting with the virus. If it rises above one, then the virus will start spreading exponentially. If it is below one, then the pandemic is in retreat. At the start of the pandemic, it was used as a key metric for determining lockdown restrictions.

Mrs Morgan said cases were rising but Wales still had the lowest rates in the UK, however she repeated that Wales is at the beginning of a third wave.

Read more: Wales is at the start of a third wave of coronavirus

In February when the nation was in full lockdown, Wales' R number was between 0.7 and 0.9.

Delta has spread from three small clusters to communities in every part of Wales, she added, saying that in the past fortnight cases and positivity rates had doubled.

Last week, Welsh Government announced it will not relax further restrictions. Mrs Morgan said that the four week pause - until July 16 - could help reduce hospital admissions by up to half at a time.

She said the NHS was "very busy".

She told the Senedd that eight out of 10 of Wales' new cases were the Delta variant and that the R rate is between 1 and 1.4 - "a further sign infections are once again rising".

She said cases are rising in every area of Wales and now approaching 100 per 100,000 people in Conwy, and 50 in 100,000 in Denbighshire and Flintshire.

Mrs Morgan said Wales is two to three weeks behind the rest of the UK but details from there are a "sobering vision" of what may come.

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