THE CORONAVIRUS has claimed 14 lives in Penarth and the surrounding areas to date, new figures released by the Office for National Statistics have shown.

Five of these deaths took place in Penarth, whilst four were recorded in Llandough.

There have been three and two deaths in Sully and Dinas Powys respectively.

In Barry West, there have been ten coronavirus related deaths, whilst Palmerstone has experienced five.

However, the number of confirmed cases have continued to decline, providing further evidence that the UK has passed the peak of the coronavirus outbreak.

There were seven new cases in the Vale of Glamorgan on Wednesday, compared to 20 on the same day last week.

Public Health Wales reported 95 new cases of Covid-19 in Wales, which is 73 lower than Wednesday April 29.

Deaths in hospitals have also declined, though deaths in care homes continue to accelerate.

Dr Giri Shankar, Incident Director for the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak response at Public Health Wales, warned that the public must continue to observe social distancing and avoid all non-essential travel over the bank holiday weekend.

Public Health Wales reported that 743 tests were carried out across Wales in the last 24 hours.

This is more than 8,000 short of what the Welsh Government “would need” for a track, test, and trace programme which would allow the country to exit the lockdown.

On Tuesday Vaughan Gething said: “As a reference point yesterday the Scottish Government set out a track, test, and trace programme themselves, and they estimated that they will need by the end of May15,500 tests.

“If that were the approach we took in Wales we would need under 9,000 tests.”

Full data on the coronavirus can be found on the Public Health Wales website.