Welsh Health Minister Eluned Morgan has pledged that all incidents of coronavirus caught in hospitals will be investigated and lessons will be learnt to reduce the chances of it happening to anyone else.

The Welsh Government has said that more than £4.5 million is being invested into a programme investigating hospital-acquired Covid-19 infections in Wales. The funding will go towards supporting a framework used by health boards to report and investigate hospital-acquired infections. Wales is the only nation in the UK to record every incident of a hospital-acquired infection – also known as nosocomial infections - via the ICNET database.

The investment over two years will support health boards and the NHS Delivery Unit to take forward an important and complex programme of investigation work into cases of hospital-acquired Covid-19.

Covid infections have been contracted in hospitals, accounting for around one per cent of all coronavirus infections.

Morgan said: “Our NHS in Wales has worked incredibly hard to keep the virus out of hospital settings, but unfortunately it has been impossible to achieve this. With high rates of community transmission outside of hospitals during various periods of the pandemic, it has been a monumental task to prevent Covid-19 entering our healthcare settings and spreading to those receiving care in them.

“We know that in some cases patients have experienced harm or died after catching Covid-19 in hospital settings, and we are deeply saddened by all those who have been affected by this. We are investing in this framework as we are determined to not only investigate into every case of hospital-acquired Covid-19 infection, but learn why it happened so we can do everything in our powers to prevent it from happening again. It will also be reviewed in two years due to the evolving nature of the pandemic.”