The ONS led the way informing the UK response to the Coronavirus pandemic. But what lessons can be learned and how can we best prepare not only ourselves, but the rest of the world, for the next pandemic?

Transcript

MILES FLETCHER

This is Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher, and as we approach the darkest months of winter, we're revisiting COVID-19.

Now the ONS doesn't do predictions, and we're certainly not forecasting a resurgence of the virus, either here in the UK or anywhere else. But pandemic preparedness has been the driving force behind two important pieces of work that we're going to be talking about this time. Looking beyond our shores, how well equipped now is the world in general to spot and monitor emerging infections? We'll hear from Josie Golding of the Wellcome Trust on that, including how even weather events like El Nino could affect the spread of viruses. We'll also talk to my ONS colleague, Joy Preece about the pandemic preparedness toolkit, a five-year project backed by Wellcome to create and develop resources that will help countries with health surveillance in the event of future pandemics.

But first, and closer to home, a new UK winter surveillance study to gather vital data on COVID-19 is now well underway. Jo Evans is its head of operations. Jo, this is a brand new COVID-19 survey the ONS is running in partnership with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). What is the new survey and what's it going to be monitoring over the winter?

JO EVANS

So this is now the winter COVID infection study. And we're going to be going out to, I think we've got 145,000 people signed up, and we're going to ask them to take a lateral flow test to see if they are testing positive for COVID-19. Then we'll ask them to tell us a little bit about how they're feeling, what symptoms they have and some other household information - what work do they do? Do they have caring responsibilities? And so on.

So we're gonna be getting people to take a test and everyone's familiar of course now with administering their own lateral flow test, that wasn't the case back in the early days of the pandemic, when it was a new thing for the vast majority of us. So they'll take a test that'll tell us whether they are positive or negative for COVID-19. And on top of that, we're going to be gathering data in the form of a questionnaire.

That's right. And then this is a collaboration this time, so we'll be working with the UKHSA. I mean, we've worked with them on the COVID infection study before, but this time what we'll be doing is looking at those responses of how many people are telling us that they have COVID-19 And we'll be trying to understand that by where people live or their age group and so on, but we'll be sharing that information with UKHSA and they will then be looking at what the impact is on hospitals. So what they call the infection hospitalisation rate, how many people are going into hospital because they have COVID, so it'll really help us understand what pressures there are on the NHS over this winter period.

And that will give us some inkling, once again, about how many people are infected but not actually displaying any symptoms?

Absolutely. And we do ask people about their symptoms and if they tell us they test positive, we'll then be sending them a second questionnaire, a follow up, asking them to keep testing until they get two consecutive negative tests so that we can see how long they are testing positive, but we'll also ask them how long did their symptoms last and did they need to go and see a doctor, did they take any medication, so really trying to understand how they're experiencing that period of illness.

So during those critical winter months, that'll give us some insight into what's really going on on-the- ground and in communities.

That's right and we're running this study from November right through to March so that we can understand that, because COVID, unlike flu, it's not a seasonal virus, but we know that the NHS really suffers through the winter with those increased pressures, with more people needing their services. And this is about understanding what's happening out there. In the community, and what impact that is having on our healthcare services.

Another very important aspect of that is we're going to be monitoring for people who say they're suffering the symptoms of what is popularly known as long-COVID, ongoing impacts of the virus, and that will fill a very important evidence gap won't it.

Absolutely. We will in a follow up questionnaire be asking people how long they've had COVID for and whether they have long-COVID. And interestingly, in some research we did when we were designing the questionnaire, long-COVID sufferers told us that they know precisely what date their symptoms started and how long they've had it because of the impact it's been having on their lives. So we are hopeful that this study will provide some really useful information.

So 145,000 people taking part. Has it been difficult to get as many people as that involved?

Do you know what, we got halfway there within the first 48 hours, people were so keen to take part in this study. We've really been surprised about that.

It's probably a reflection of the success of the profile that the original study had.

I think so, people are really keen to do their bit here and get involved in this study. And we've had a lot of participants, particularly in the older age groups, who have signed up so we will have to do something that we call 'weighting of the data' across the different age groups, but we do this all the time and we are also going out to those under 16s, right up to the over 70s.

And as well as taking part in a very important public study, people get a COVID test for free and can see for themselves whether they've been affected.

Yeah, think that's one of the things people are keen to do, particularly over the winter periods when we're going to be mingling and visiting family, that reassurance really that you're going to test every month and find out whether or not you have COVID, I think we all want to make sure that we are virus free before we go and see our loved ones over Christmas, for example.

Well, we're meeting to discuss this in mid-November. The first results are still a few weeks away but how are things going, we've got enough people? Are the tests out in the field yet?

The tests are out in the field. I think we're looking to get two publications in before Christmas, so testing windows start next week. We're expecting around 25,000 people a week to take their tests and answer their questionnaire.