UK Government will stop publishing Covid data from January as country ‘living with the virus’

The government will stop publishing Covid data in the coming weeks as experts say the country is now living with the virus three years on from it first being detected.

Data and modelling released by the UK Health Security Agency which projects deaths and hospitalisations with the virus will no longer be made public from early January.

Chief data scientist Dr Nick Watkins said releasing this specific data is ‘no longer necessary’ as the country gets back to normal thanks to vaccines and therapeutics.

Data includes the reproductive rate, or R rate, which refers to the number of people an infected person will pass the virus onto. 

The government will stop publishing Covid data in the coming weeks as experts say the country is now living with the virus three years on

The R range and growth rate for England had been published weekly during the height of the pandemic, and fortnightly since April this year.

It was first put out in May 2020 for all of the UK, until April 2021 when it was published for England only.

The UKHSA Epidemiology Modelling Review Group (EMRG) said that, following a detailed review, the next release of its consensus statement on Covid-19 on January 6 ‘will be the last’. 

On today’s announcement, Dr Watkins, chairman of the EMRG, said: ‘During the pandemic, the R value and growth rate served as a useful and simple indicator to inform public health action and Government decisions.

‘Now that vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to move to a phase where we are living with Covid-19, with surveillance scaled down but still closely monitored through a number of different indicators, the publication of this specific data is no longer necessary.

‘We continue to monitor Covid-19 activity in a similar way to how we monitor a number of other common illnesses and diseases.

He added that all data publications are kept under constant review and that the decision could be reversed, with modelling ‘reintroduced promptly if needed, for example, if a new variant of concern was to be identified’.

The UKHSA has urged people to take up the Covid vaccine, which it has said is helping to contribute to allowing the country to live with the virus

The R rate across Britain has been relatively stable for several months with figures showing it is at between 0.8 and 1.2.

Data shows the growth rate is between -4 and +3 per cent and that there are currently approximately 100,000 new infections per day.

The agency said Covid-19 incidence data will continue to be accessible from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) infection survey.

The most recent data from this shows that Covid cases are continuing to rise across the UK, with 1.4million estimated to be infected with it in the week ending 9 December.

There was a rise in cases in England and Scotland reported, while the trend is uncertain in Wales and Northern Ireland. 

China said on Sunday, amid a surge of new Covid cases, that it will no longer publish daily figures for Covid-19 cases and deaths. Pictured: Covid-19 patients on stretchers in Chongqing, China

The UKHSA stressed the importance of vaccination as Covid and flu cases go up this winter and urged people who felt unwell not to socialise over the festive season. 

Next month marks three years since the first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the UK. 

By the end of January 2020, with thousands of cases in China, WHO declared the virus a global health emergency.

After almost three years under strict restrictions, China said on Sunday that it will no longer publish daily figures for Covid-19 cases and deaths. 

Its National Health Commission (NHC) made the announcement amid a new surge in the virus which following it’s abandonment of its zero-Covid policy.