Daily coronavirus figures show only four new cases in the last 24 hours for Ceredigion – but health chiefs have warned that the data may not tell a true picture.

No daily figures were released on Sunday and Public Health Wales has said this afternoon that a “period of data reconciliation and validation will affect our daily reporting figures for several days".

Despite this, the daily figures show that Ceredigion has recorded four new cases todaywhile Gwynedd has recorded three.

23 cases have been recorded in Pembrokeshire, 64 in Carmarthenshire and 15 in Powys.

33 deaths have been recorded in Wales today, taking the total number of deaths from suspected Covid-19 to 2,882 since the pandemic began in March.

Dr Giri Shankar, incident director for the outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said: “Public Health Wales continues to be concerned at the high levels of coronavirus in nearly every part of Wales which is putting NHS Wales under extreme pressure.

“We would advise the public that if they still want to have meaningful and safe interactions within the permitted exclusive Christmas ‘bubble’, then it is vital that you plan ahead, consider the risks involved and decide what would be safest for you and your loved ones.

“This means staying out of other people’s homes, limiting the times and the numbers of people that you meet, maintaining social distancing and hand hygiene, working from home if you can, and self-isolating if you show symptoms of coronavirus or are asked to do so by contact tracers.

“As the number of cases continues to accelerate in Wales, we would also advise people to consider their plans for Christmas from the perspective of what they ‘should’ do, rather than what they ‘can’ do, in order to protect their families and communities.”

Speaking on the daily figures possibly not showing a true picture, Dr Shankar added: “On Friday, 11 December there was planned maintenance of the NHS Welsh Laboratory Information Management System (WLIMS) to allow for essential service upgrades to take place.

“This will affect our daily reporting of coronavirus figures, and therefore there was no release of daily figures on Sunday, 13 December. There will be a period of data reconciliation and validation that will affect our daily reporting figures for several days.

“From today (Monday), we will be changing the daily ‘data correct as of’ from 1pm the previous day to 9am the previous day for operational reasons.

“From Monday, 14 December, we will be bringing forward the publication time for our data dashboard and our daily statement from 2pm to the earlier time of 12pm.

“From Monday, 14 December, we plan to extend the lag period for seven day case rate reporting from two to four days. This will further improve the accuracy of coronavirus cases per 100,000 population by local authority area for the most recent seven-day incidence.”