Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to monitor covid-19 (a) prevalence and (b) mutations, in the context of the suspension of the covid-19 infection survey.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) will continue to monitor COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 remains notifiable to UKHSA for all laboratories in England performing a primary diagnostic role. Laboratory reporting of SARS-CoV-2 cases will include any cases identified through testing in hospital undertaken to inform the clinical care of symptomatic patients. This will inform assessments such as positivity.

Within the community and primary care, real-time syndromic surveillance will continue via general practices. These systems will inform measures such as the incidence of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection in the population.

UKHSA’s COVID-19 surveillance work is published in weekly regular reports and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports-2022-to-2023-season

UKHSA undertakes regular horizon scanning of all available SARS-CoV-2 genomic data for potentially significant mutations or combinations of mutations. This includes global data uploaded to international repositories, as well as all data generated from United Kingdom samples. In the absence of the COVID-19 Infection Survey, the UK data component may include samples from hospitals, adult social care, and some research studies.