Covid-19 Update

Lord Bishop of Coventry Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

To be clear to the noble Lord, the dashboard was made available on 22 June. It has a very large amount of local information, including information from 111, hospitals and the test and trace programme. The analysis of the data will be enhanced using the latest technology in order to give the most granular information possible. Those enhancements will be rolled out very shortly.

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, the Minister said that data required by local authorities is given to them, but I am told by the leader of Coventry City Council and our director of public health that, although data sharing has improved over the past two weeks, it still comes from different sources and does not include data on workplaces and other settings that people regularly visit or, as we have heard, on ethnicity. Can the Minister provide further assurances that local authorities will be supplied with the full data that they need to respond to local outbreaks in a streamlined form and at an early point?

[Lord Bethell]

The right reverend Prelate is right that bringing together data from a very large number of sources is a challenge. One could include social media data, digital tracking data, hospital data and 111 data. We are working on systems that bring all the possible data one could imagine to one place at the joint biosecurity centre. We have made huge strides on that, but there is work to be done, and we are very much focused on it.