Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish data on the number of antibiotics prescribed in each month since April 2019; what assessment has been made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on trends in the prescription of antibotics.

Public Health England’s (PHE) English surveillance programme for antimicrobial utilisation and resistance is working with the National Health Service and across sectors, to develop and maintain surveillance systems for monitoring trends in antimicrobial use and resistance in England. Data can be viewed on the antimicrobial resistance Fingertips webpage at the following link:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/profile/amr-local-indicators

PHE will track the impact of COVID-19 on antimicrobial resistance and utilisation using these established surveillance data systems.