Covid-19: UK will stop publishing virus data from January, here's what we know

Three years on from when Covid-19 was first detected, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) will stop publishing modelling data on the virus. Chief data scientist, Dr Nick Watkins has stated that it is ‘no longer necessary’ as the country learns to live with the virus through therapeutic drugs and vaccines, as per The Guardian.

The R Rate

Up until now, the R rate for England had been published weekly throughout the majority of the pandemic, and then changed to fortnightly in April this year. The first publication was in May 2020 for all of the UK, until April 2021 when it was published for England only.

The reproductive rate, the R rate is the number of people that one infected person will pass on a virus to, on average. It is an estimate calculated by scientists looking backwards at data that has come before.

However, the UKHSA Epidemiology Modelling Review Group (EMRG) have now said that the next publication of its consensus statement on Covid-19 on 6 January will be the last, though all incidence data will still be available from the Office for National Statistics, as per The Guardian.

Living with Covid-19

Watkins, chairman of the EMRG, said:

During the pandemic, the R value and growth rate served as a useful and simple indicator to inform public health action and government decisions.

Now that vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to move to a phase where we are living with Covid-19, with surveillance scaled down but still closely monitored through a number of different indicators, the publication of this specific data is no longer necessary.

We continue to monitor Covid-19 activity in a similar way to how we monitor a number of other common illnesses and diseases.

The most recent data from the ONS shows that Covid cases are continuing to rise across the UK, with 1.4million estimated to be infected in the week ending 9 December, as per the Daily Mail.

Sources used:

- The Guardian 'UK to stop publishing Covid modelling data'

- The Daily Mail 'UK Government will stop publishing Covid data from January as country moves into phase of 'living with the virus''