The chief executive of NHS Wales Andrew Goodall said that there are “encouraging signs” that infections across the country are falling.
Coronavirus is in the community is “significantly down” compared to December, and hospital patients with Covid has fallen by around a quarter.
Public Health Wales (PHW) figures shows the number of people being infected has fallen as cases per 100,000 population in down to 111.4.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Dr Goodall said, “Our community prevalence rates are down, they are down very significantly from where we were in December.
“We see the positivity rates and the reproduction values are well down within Wales now.
“Just over the last two or three weeks or so the number of patients in hospitals for coronavirus has actually reduced by about a quarter.”
“That is going to still take us some time I think to reduce those to what we would say would be close to normal levels,” the NHS chief said.
Dr Giri Shankar, from PHW said, “Although the data currently shows that on an all-Wales level the numbers of cases are reducing and that the incidence is now below 120 cases per 100,000 population, the rates in some areas, particularly in north Wales are still at nearly double that, and there have been small increases in others.
“It is encouraging to see that the numbers of people being treated for coronavirus in our hospitals is reducing, [but] there are still a large number of people who are extremely ill, which means that the pressure on services is still very high.”
Dr Goodall warned that critical care beds could be some 25% more in the second wave amid the high numbers being admitted to hospital with the virus.
He added, “I think what is different in the second wave, that it has just been a higher volume and that is the thing that has caused the pressure right across our system.
“And it will mean sadly in areas like critical care, although the data will say that some of the outcomes feel the same [as the first wave], we would have ended up sadly with 25% more deaths in a critical care environment,” said Dr Goodall.
“We would expect a normal emergency medical patient to stay for perhaps between five to seven days, a typical coronavirus patient coming in to our hospitals will be there for three times longer than that.
“There will be ongoing problems with patients who need to be cared for after they’ve been discharged, but also those that will still need to receive care in the community.”
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