Statistics

Planned changes to coronavirus data page on Scottish Government website

July 20, 2020 by No Comments | Category Health and social care

Blog Updated on 28/07/2020

We have been publishing data every day since early April on the Scottish Government website. Given where Scotland is now in the pandemic, we think it’s a good time to refocus this publication.

Some of the information developments in Scotland include:

Public Health Scotland COVID-19 data – the weekly report published every Wednesday includes the latest data and trends on cases, hospital and ICU admissions, patient characteristics and Test & Protect. There is also a cases dashboard which is being developed further to include testing information and local area time series, as well as a wider health harms dashboard.

Scottish Government COVID-19 Four Harms Dashboard – updated every Monday at 14:00, this brings together data and evidence on the broader impacts of COVID-19. These are referred to as the four harms of COVID-19:

  • direct health impact
  • wider health impacts
  • societal impacts and
  • economic impacts

Work is also underway on a new public facing resource that will include interactive maps of COVID-19 cases at local authority level. We are working with Public Health Scotland to release this in July with plans to add further data in future.

The table below shows our planned changes for Wednesday 22/07/2020, but we will continue to review the site as things develop.

Web page section

Changes planned for Wednesday 22nd July

Overall layout

We will rearrange the layout of the page from a topic basis to a daily, weekly and since the start basis so people can see the latest figures first. We will include key weekly figures on hospital and ICU admissions from PHS and deaths from NRS.

Scottish numbers

 

 These will be updated daily – and will likely include key information on testing, cases, deaths, care homes and hospitals.

We will continue to work with partners to improve the quality of data and will publish the total number of confirmed cases in ICU for Scotland but will no longer include suspected cases, as these fluctuate due to patient screening.

We will add in the total number of new tests reported (through NHS Scotland and UK labs).

We will include suspected COVID-19 cases in adult care homes pending a review of this data (see below).

Data by health board

These will be updated daily and we will keep the ongoing presentation and inclusion of this table on the webpage under review as other data and dashboards are developed.

Testing

 Due to the stage we are at in the pandemic, with testing for all those aged 5 and over who are symptomatic, we will no longer collect data on testing of key workers and their symptomatic household members, which commenced to allow key workers to return to work promptly. We now report on specific key workers such as care home staff.

We will continue to report the numbers of tests daily, and to date and will add a weekly figure.

Care homes

 We will keep publishing the daily and cumulative number of suspected COVID-19 cases in adult care homes pending a review of the data given current low levels and caveats around the data as well as the new information that is emerging through Test & Protect.

We will update the number of adult care homes with active cases weekly rather than daily.

Blog Updated on 28/07/2020 Extensive testing is routinely being carried out in care homes, enabling the identification of positive confirmed cases quickly via the Public Health Scotland (PHS) eCOSS system. The usefulness of suspected cases at this stage in the pandemic is therefore reduced. To ensure we continue to adequately monitor the situation in care homes and to provide public confidence, we will discontinue the publication of suspected cases from 29 July and replace with the number of confirmed cases among care homes residents on a weekly basis using eCOSS data. The first weekly data would be published from 5 August.

Community health & care

 We will no longer report NHS24 calls, Coronavirus Helpline calls and ambulance attendances and conveyances.  We will instead refer to the PHS weekly report.

We will continue to update information on numbers of people advised to shield and accessing support on a weekly basis, and will shortly also begin reporting on deaths in the shielding group (Thursdays).

We will update the delayed discharge figure once a week (Thursdays) rather than every weekday.

Health & Social Care Staff

 We will change to weekly rather than daily updates for NHS staff absence (Wednesdays).

Excel downloads

 We will leave all data previously published as a record for information. We will stop publishing new data on suspected cases in hospital and ICU as well as those mentioned above. We will add explanatory notes to the data files.

Where we have changed from daily to weekly, where possible we will add a weekly series back in time and convert the chart to a weekly chart.

Care homes page

 We will no longer publish additional breakdowns on suspected COVID-19 cases in adult care homes.

We will continue to publish weekly adult care home testing data and COVID-19 deaths reported to the Care Inspectorate.

Tweet
Share
Share
0 Shares

Tags: , , ,

Comments

Leave a comment