PU-21-0140 — Services Related to Covid-19

Descriptions

Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organisation on 12 March 2020. Effective surveillance has rapidly become an integral component of the long-term solution to the pandemic. There are also critical policy questions regarding viral immunity that need to be answered, including the possibility of onward transmission and waning immunity in individuals who are positive, whether such individuals can be re-infected symptomatically or asymptomatically and about incidence of new infection in individuals without prior exposure. ONS was commissioned at the end of April 2020 to conduct the Covid-19 infection survey to collect the data which can help to answer these questions and inform HMG’s policies and operational interventions regarding the Covid-19 pandemic. The CIS is a repeated cross-sectional household survey with additional serial sampling and longitudinal follow-up which provides an estimate of the proportion and number of people living in private households who would have had Covid-19 at any given time in the last week based on trend modelling. The study is led by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and draws on the world-leading scientific expertise of the University of Oxford. The CIS is now the flagship surveillance study and is the key source of data on Covid-19 infection, incidence and antibody prevalence in communities across the UK. We work with our key stakeholder partners including Public Health England, Scotland and Wales, the Joint Biosecurity Centre, Ministers, SAGE, and the wider Test and Trace programmes across the UK to inform required policy and operational interventions.