COVID-19 statistics dashboard

Published 05/04/2022   |   Last Updated 21/06/2022   |   Reading Time minutes

Our COVID-19 dashboard shows data on hospitalisations and deaths in Wales. We’ve included summary charts which are updated regularly and revised as published data changes.

As the testing programme moves away from universal and routine testing to a more targeted approach, we have shifted the focus of the dashboard towards data on hospitalisations and deaths from COVID-19.

The first tab shows data on hospitalisations. Click on the arrows at the bottom to see data for deaths. All visuals can be viewed at full screen by hovering over them and clicking on “focus mode”.

Interpretation of vaccine status

Public Health Wales explain that this data should not be interpreted as a measure of vaccination effectiveness:

In the context of very high vaccine coverage in the population, even with a highly effective vaccine, it is expected that a large proportion of cases would occur in vaccinated individuals, simply because a larger proportion of the population are vaccinated than unvaccinated.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) monitors the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

Hospitalisation definitions

The number of COVID-19 hospitalisations is the number of staffed beds occupied by a patient that satisfies the definition of ‘Confirmed’, ‘Suspected’ or ‘Recovering’.

A ‘Non-COVID-19’ patient is a patient that does not satisfy any of the suspected, confirmed or recovering criteria. Patients who acquire COVID-19 during their hospital stay and subsequently meet downgrading criteria are reported as non-COVID-19.

Precise definitions and statistical quality information can be found on the Welsh Government website.

Excess deaths definition

The 2015 to 2019 five-year average was used to compare against deaths registered in 2020 and 2021. This provides a comparison of the number of deaths expected per week in a usual (non-COVID-19 pandemic) year. Deaths registered in 2022 will be compared with the 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021 five-year average.

Excess deaths for January 2022 should be interpreted with caution. The five-year average used to calculate excess deaths includes deaths registered in January 2021 - a period that saw some of the highest number of weekly deaths due to COVID-19. This decreases the excess deaths and can partly explain why there a large negative values for excess deaths in January 2022.

Data sources

Hospitalisations data is published on the Welsh Government website. Data from a survey of vaccine status in hospital inpatients is published by Public Health Wales (PHW).

ONS publish data on weekly registered deaths and excess deaths and a monthly mortality analysis.

COVID-19 statistics are reported by PHW on their dashboard and updated daily Monday-Friday. PHW publishes a range of data on confirmed cases, testing episodes, deaths, hospital admissions, GP respiratory consultations, NHS Direct and 111 calls, schools surveillance, lateral flow testing and vaccinations. PHW cautions that all the data published on its dashboard is provisional and will be subject to future revision.

The Welsh Government’s COVID-19 interactive dashboard provides an overview of data and associated direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic on society and the economy.

PHW also publishes vaccination data on its dashboard. The latest data is analysed in our articles on COVID-19 vaccination data.

The UK Government publishes daily data from across the UK in a dashboard. The Scottish Government publishes daily statistics on its website with the National Records of Scotland publishing a weekly update on COVID-19 deaths. The Department of Health in Northern Ireland publishes daily statistics on its dashboard.

For global information on COVID-19, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has a dashboard showing confirmed cases and deaths, and Our World in Data publishes information on testing, cases, deaths, and hospitalisations.


Article by Joe Wilkes, Helen Jones and Paul Worthington, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament