Statistics

Future of COVID-19 Data Reporting

April 5, 2022 by No Comments | Category Health and social care

Following the publication of Scotland’s Strategic Framework update in February 2022 we are now planning to move to a single main source of headline COVID-19 data. All headline COVID-19 data can now be sourced from Public Health Scotland’s (PHS) COVID-19 Daily Dashboard.

The Scottish Government (SG) will no longer provide updates to the Coronavirus (COVID-19): daily data for Scotland page on gov.scot from Monday 11 April onwards, but will instead clearly signpost to the range of COVID-19 data published – including headline data on COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, deaths and vaccinations published on the PHS dashboard as well as to other sources of data reported elsewhere. Data on the number of patients with recently confirmed COVID-19 in hospital and ICU has now been added to the PHS daily dashboard.

Ongoing public reporting of COVID-19 data is needed to inform decision making and to provide users with open and transparent access to information to understand the latest position. The following outputs will continue to be published and form the key sources for COVID-19 data.

The PHS daily dashboard will continue to provide headline data on COVID-19 cases, hospitalisations, deaths and vaccinations, as well as neighbourhood and demographic breakdowns. Whilst the PHS statistical report and SG state of the epidemic report will bring together the latest data from across sources and present analysis and insights to understand the current situation of the COVID-19 epidemic.

We will also no longer provide updates to COVID-19 daily data on the Scottish Government Official Statistics open data publishing platform, www.statistics.gov.scot. However, PHS will provide open data behind all of the latest COVID-19 daily data on their open data platform, alongside the large number of datasets already available.

COVID data was publicly released seven days per week from April 2020, and more recently five days per week from mid-February 2022. This has been an extensive undertaking and we are now reviewing how best to deploy valuable analytical resources in the Scottish Government and PHS to other COVID and non-COVID priorities.

We have been working closely with PHS and other analytical partners to review the content and frequency of existing COVID public reporting and consider what public evidence, data and analysis will be required going forward to support the future monitoring and surveillance of COVID-19.

Clearly further changes will be needed to respond to changes to testing policy and future plans for surveillance. PHS will review the frequency and content of reporting in line with the stage of the epidemic, and are engaging with the other UK nations.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank analytical partners and data providers across Scotland and the rest of the UK. Their efforts have provided the evidence to inform Scottish Government decision-making throughout the pandemic.

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