Title

COVID-19 patients in acute hospitals actively treated for COVID-19 by bed type, local health board and date.

Last update

13 July 2023 13 July 2023

Next update

No longer updated

Publishing organisation

Welsh Government

Source 1

Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW)

Contact email

stats.healthinfo@gov.wales

Designation

Management information

Lowest level of geographical disaggregation

Local health boards

Geographical coverage

Wales

Languages covered

English and Welsh

Data licensing

You may use and re-use this data free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government License - see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence

General description

Figures show the number and percentage of confirmed COVID-19 patients in acute hospitals actively treated for COVID-19 by bed type, local health board and date. The data are taken from management information and are subject to change. They have not been not been subject to the same validation processes undertaken for official statistics releases.

In line with the principles of the transition from pandemic to endemic, routine collection of the weekly situational report (SITREP) conducted by Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW), which provides the data in this series, was ceased on 12 July 2023. The publication on 13 July 2023 will therefore be the final update to these data. Related data, though not directly comparable, are available on the Public Health Wales COVID-19 surveillance dashboard.

Data collection and calculation

Daily situational report (SITREP) from Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) at a hospital level and local health board (LHB) level. Data is submitted via a TEXT file and transferred to a SQL database. As the return is sourced from management information, hospital level data are not suitable for publication.

This is a new data collection. Health boards have been asked to categorise inpatients with confirmed COVID-19 according to whether or not they are actively being treated for COVID-19. Patients not actively being treated for COVID-19 are those where the infection is incidental to the main cause for their hospitalisation.

There is no standard definition for ‘actively being treated for COVID-19’ and there are some differences across health boards and settings in the methods used to make the decision. Work to understand the quality and consistency of the data is ongoing, but the figures are considered to be suitable for providing a high level estimate.

A patient is defined as ‘Confirmed’ COVID-19 only following a positive test and will remain until downgrading criteria are met. (See recovering COVID-19 below).

A patient is defined as ‘Recovering’ COVID-19 if either they have a negative test result as confirmation of transition to recovering COVID or they meet the following criteria:

• completed 10 days post a positive COVID-19 test; and
• shown clinical improvement in their condition, with at least some respiratory recovery; and
• had no fever (> 37.8°C) for 48 hours; and
• no underlying severe immunosuppression

Frequency of publication

No longer updated

Data reference periods

17 January 2022 onwards.

Revisions information

Historic data are subject to revision at any point as hospitals can re-submitted a return anytime, and therefore may differ to that previously published information.

Keywords

COVID-19, Coronavirus, NHS, patients, beds, hospital

Weblinks

https://gov.wales/nhs-activity-and-capacity-during-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic

Please see the Chief Statistician’s blog for more information on data quality generally.
https://digitalanddata.blog.gov.wales/2020/06/04/chief-statisticians-update-measuring-people-in-hospital-and-some-thoughts-on-data-quality/

Please see the UK Government COVID-19 dashboard for information on healthcare at a UK level:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare

Statistical quality

Figures are for patients from acute hospitals only. Patients from community hospitals, field hospitals and mental health units, and patients in in Velindre NHS Trust are not included.

Figures are for patients with confirmed COVID-19. Suspected COVID-19 cases and patients recovering from COVID-19 are not included.

From 24 March 2022, health boards have been implementing the updated COVID-19 testing guidance across the hospital estate. All patients will continue to be tested on admission. However, there is a change for patients who remain asymptomatic during their stay, whereby there is no longer a requirement to test those patients. This will mean that a number of incidental / nosocomial cases will no longer be captured, and this will have an impact on the figures reported.

We are aware of an issue affecting the data received from Swansea Bay University Health Board covering the period from 16 February to 31 March. The data are believed to be an undercount of the true number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 related patients. This would mean that the totals presented here for Wales will be lower than the true figures over that period. Colleagues at Swansea Bay University Health Board are working to resolve the issue and re-submit revised data for the full period affected.

17 May 2022 - An issue with Swansea Bay University Health Board data covering the period from 16 February to 31 March has been resolved. The data were an undercount of the true number of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 related patients. This meant the totals presented for Wales were lower than the true figures over that period.

Name

HLTH0089