Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what parameters he is continuing to measure to assess the (a) prevalence and (b) pattern of covid-19 infections.

The Government continues monitoring the virus through surveillance studies such as the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) COVID-19 Infection Survey and other data sources, including genomic sequencing. The ONS’ Survey weekly bulletin provides estimates of the number of positive cases among the population living in private households in the United Kingdom, including by region and age group. This includes the number of new cases and the change in positive cases over time.