FOI reference: FOI-2023-1647
You asked
Please provide any data collected by the Winter Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Study up until the 5 December 2023 request from the UKHSA for "exceptional pre-release access", especially including prevalence and test positivity data though anything considered part of "ONS official statistics from the Winter Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Study, England and Scotland" would be appreciated.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Our first publication of the Winter Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Study (WCIS) from 7 December includes all of the information in the same format that was presented to the UKHSA as part of the pre-release access process. This was made publicly available here: Winter COVID-19 Infections, England and Scotland: 7 December 2023.
The WCIS has been launched jointly by the ONS and the UK Health Security Agency, with data collected by the ONS via online questionnaire completion and self-reported Lateral Flow Device (LFD) results. As part of our partnership with the UKHSA, we provide pre-release access to the positivity rates 24 hours in advance of the publication which is in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. This enables timely decision-making to help protect members of all communities from the impact of COVID-19 and reduce winter pressures on our health services in England and Scotland. We set out the agreement here: Exchange of letters between UKHSA and ONS for exceptional pre-release access to Winter COVID-19 Infection Study statistics.
Although the outputs from the study are scheduled for a fortnightly publication, they are created weekly and provided to UKHSA under the pre-release access agreements on a weekly basis. The first meeting was held on 29 November and the second on 6 December.