Just as Public Health Wales (PHW) cleared up the confusion over their ‘number of Powys Covid-19 deaths’, Powys Teaching Health Board (PTHB) has confirmed there are now two sets of figures for recording positive cases in the county.
The confusion started yesterday, when PTHB released news that their ‘track and trace’ operation had led a further 19 people in the county testing positive for the virus since the start of the month.
However, the official Public Health Wales daily statistics have shown that just 12 people in total had tested positive during the same time period for the whole county.
Thankfully, PTHB have been quick to explain the situation with Adrian Osbourne, Assistant Director (Engagement and Communication), stating that “the main reason for this can be found in the small print on the Public Health Wales dashboard”.
Adrian explained: “The daily charts and local authorities table where the information is broken down at health board or local authority level is based on tests that are undertaken through the NHS Wales testing programme.
“There are some test results on Wales residents (including Powys residents) that are not undertaken through the NHS Wales testing programme.
“For example, if I use a home testing kit, or if I go to a drive through testing centre over the border in England, then these are processed through a set of laboratories called the Lighthouse Labs.
“Last week Public Health Wales therefore added a further tab to their dashboard called “Tests from non-NHS Wales labs”.
“This tab includes the test results from home testing kits and from drive through testing centres in England. In their small print they indicate that these results are not yet incorporated into the health board / local authority tables above, or into their headline number of cases.
“They indicate that they are working on this – to be fair it is not as simple as just “adding it on” because they need to do things like match NHS number, check it is not a duplicate etc.
“So, on that tab you will see that in addition to the 77 cases today (Friday) in their headline number, they are reporting 13 positive cases on the “Tests from non-NHS Wales labs” tab.
“Since June 1, there have been over 100 new cases in Wales on this tab. Some of these are from Powys, which accounts for the difference between the 11/12 that you can see on the Daily Chart / Local Authority table and the number we are seeing through our contact tracing service.”
The Covid-19 Powys statistics have been the subject of debate throughout the pandemic, especially with the PHW declaring there have been 14 deaths compared to the Office of National Statistics who are stating 86.
Photo: Military personnel at a mobile COVID-19 testing station in Newtown