Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that local authority public health officials receive data on positive covid-19 test results in their local authority area.

The priority has always been to ensure that public health bodies, such as Public Health England (PHE), have the data they require under the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations, and under the updates to the Control of Patient Information Regulations, to undertake their vital work in relation to contact tracing, case management and health surveillance. PHE provides the results to the appropriate local PHE Health Protection Team, who work with their respective local authorities as part of their routine public health response arrangements. We are developing a solution for our stakeholders to access the additional Management Information data that will further support their work, and local authorities and the National Health Service are top priorities.