Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what research his Department has undertaken to enable the early detection of superspreaders of covid-19.
The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
The NIHR and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have partnered to fund a comprehensive programme of research on COVID-19 to understand, prevent, treat and manage COVID-19. As part of this, there is no specific research commissioned on early detection of super spreaders of COVID-19.
The NIHR and UKRI are, however, funding relevant work looking at the transmission and epidemiology of the disease such as the Virus Watch study which is looking at household transmission; and the TraCK study looking at transmission between children, and between children and adults.