A council leader has revealed 96 per cent of the people named as contacts by those infected with Covid-19 in his county have been traced.

Conwy county council leader Cllr Sam Rowlands gave the information in response to a question in a full meeting of members from Capelulo councillor Anne McCaffrey.

Cllr McCaffrey said the virus was “spiralling out of control” and the death toll in the county had risen to 191.

She said national politicians continued to “argue about the facts, about the science and about the evidence”, before asking what “granular information at neighbourhood level” was being used to inform the council’s decision making.

She added: “Closer to home stats – when they are made available – are more meaningful and arguably more impactful in raising awareness and changing behaviour.

“If only our residents knew where the really local hotspots were, and how and where transmission is occurring, this would help us all to minimise infection and additional deaths.”

Cllr Rowlands named a number of sources including Test, Trace and Protect (TTP) data that allowed the council to drill down to specific premises to see where outbreaks were occurring.

He said: “Over the last seven days the numbers (of people infected) in Conwy have been rising.

“There’s a huge amount of information our officers are able to use from TTP data that we have.

“That lies with information we get from Public Health Wales (PHW) and of course from the health board as well.

“We know the number of cases in our region. Over the last four weeks in North Wales there’s been more than 3,000 cases and that’s generated more than 12,500 contacts for TTP.

“Here in Conwy since the start of September there have been 619 Covid cases which have generated around 3,000 contacts.

“We have a 96 per cent success rate in speaking to those contacts, which is an extremely impressive rate of contact.

“We can build a picture of who and where is being infected – there’s a huge amount of raw data that is used to understand and feed into decisions.”

In response Cllr MCaffrey asked if he would consider publishing neighbourhood level information, “clearly identifying hot-spots and sharing where transition is occurring”.

She claimed even GPs were asking for the information which she found “quite surprising”.

Cllr Rowlands replied: “If there’s any way to put out data that is helpful to people, I’m more than happy to look at that in addition to what Public Health Wales is currently doing.”