You asked
Firstly what is the mortality rate from COVID-19 within the N.Tees and Hartlepool trust?
I would also request what information is held by the trust in determining the accuracy of the PCR tests?
How many false positives per 1000 tests have been determined over the past year of testing?
In the event of testing positive by a PCR test, what further diagnostic testing is carried out to verify to verify that positive?
As N.Tees and Hartlepool trust and PHE appear to have no records of how many PCR tests have been carried out on residents residing within N.Tees and Hartlepool trust catchment I ask the same question of yourselves.
I find it very strange that of all the PCR tests carried out and the 505 deaths to 26th February within the catchment of N.Tees and Hartlepool Trust cannot be calculated to give a mortality rate.
Also, the accuracy of the PCR test must be quantifiable in over a year of testing, after all it is the main driver for keeping the pandemic going, the review of PCR testing published in June of last year and the accuracy of the information contained is woefully out of date, what is the latest information available?
We said
Thank you for your request.
Testing information:
Unfortunately, we do not hold information about the information held by the N. Tees and Hartlepool trust in determining the accuracy of the PCR tests.
However, please see the following information regarding our COVID-19 Infection Survey.
The COVID-19 Infection Survey is a community survey which estimates the number of current COVID-19 infections within the community population; community in this instance refers to private residential households and it excludes those in hospitals, care homes or other institutional settings. We estimate the percentage of people who have tested positive for COVID-19 at a point in time in the population by testing a representative sample of people in the UK. Participants are swabbed every week for the first 5 weeks and then every month thereafter.
To understand the accuracy of PCR testing, we account for two things in our protocol – test sensitivity and test specificity.
- Test sensitivity measures how often the test correctly identifies those who have the virus, so a test with high sensitivity will not have many false-negative results. Studies suggest that sensitivity may be somewhere between 85% and 98%. This would mean that for every 1000 tests done, it is plausible that somewhere between 20 and 150 of them will be false negatives.
- Test specificity measures how often the test correctly identifies those who do not have the virus, so a test with high specificity will not have many false-positive results. We know the specificity of our test must be very close to 100% as the low number of positive tests in our study over the summer of 2020 means that specificity would be very high even if all positives were false. For example, in the six-week period from 31 July to 10 September 2020, 159 of the 208,730 total samples tested positive. Even if all these positives were false, specificity would still be 99.92%. More information on test specificity can be found in our Methodology Article.
- A recent study on test sensitivity and specificity of both PCR and lateral flow testing can be found here.
- For further information on test sensitivity and specificity, please see this article from our academic partners here.
We do not confirm positive tests with further diagnostic analysis. The PCR test is an accredited test and part of the national testing programme. All swabs are sent to the Lighthouse laboratories at Glasgow to be tested. More information on testing can be found in our protocol.
Unfortunately, we also don't hold an update of the paper linked. However, from reviewing this paper, it seems this was prepared by Government Office for Science (GOS) for SAGE: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gos-impact-of-false-positives-and-negatives-3-june-2020
Any queries regarding this paper can therefore be directed to the Cabinet Office (CO). They can be contacted via email at foi-team@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Mortality information:
We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales. This is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration.
Unfortunately, we do not hold analysis showing the mortality rate from COVID-19 by trust.
However, once the data for 2020 have been finalised and our death registration series dataset for 2020 is released in the summer of 2021, we will be able to provide by deaths clinical commissioning group as a bespoke request. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy.
Alternatively, you may be able to obtain deaths by trust from NHS digital. They can be contacted via email at enquiries@nhsdigital.nhs.uk.
We do hold the following dataset, which may be useful to you: Death registrations and occurrences by local authority and health board. This includes provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19), by local authority, health board and place of death in the latest weeks for which data are available. Here you can view deaths in N.Tees and Hartlepool. The occurrence tabs in the 2020 edition of this dataset will be updated weekly at the same time as the 2021 edition.
In the tables labelled 'Registrations – Pivot table' and 'Occurrences – Pivot table', you can see how the mortality figures vary week on week, using the drop-down toggle and filtering on the week number and cause of death options.
For clarity: The filter/drop-down on the pivot tables for 'All-causes' does not contain COVID-19 deaths. By default, both options are ticked. If you were to untick the COVID-19 option it would deduct from the total deaths, leaving you with deaths from all other causes. Additionally, if both were ticked and you unticked All-causes, it would leave you with the total number of COVID-19 deaths.
If you would like to discuss your request further, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk.