Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what methodology his Department is using to collate data on sex, race/ethnicity and socio-economic background with regard to people (a) testing positive for covid-19 and (b) dying from covid-19.

Demographic data is collected for age, gender and ethnicity, but currently only age and gender is available weekly. For pillar 1, data is collected by the hospital, and is then enriched using patient records. For pillar 2, this data is collected when people register for a test and is voluntary, which means that people have the option not to provide their information. We do not currently report on socio-economic background.

Weekly age, sex and ethnicity data for both cases and deaths in England are available weekly in the national flu and COVID-19 surveillance reports, which are available at the following link:

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

Breakdown of cases by index of multiple deprivations, as a recognised surrogate for socioeconomic class, is also available in the same report.