Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government in which regions of England the COVID-19 R transmission rate has been recorded as being above 1.0 during (1) May, and (2) June.

The Government Office for Science has published estimates of R in NHS England regions for the past two weeks. These estimates are detailed in the following table. Regional R estimates are more uncertain and variability in the data means they are more likely to fluctuate from one week to the next.

R can only be estimated and not precisely calculated. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies’ view is that it is highly likely that the true value of R lies within the published range. If the range extends above 1 then this does not necessarily mean the epidemic in that region is increasing, just that the uncertainty in the data means it cannot be ruled out.