Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of trends in the level of (a) covid-19 infection, (b) admissions to hospital as a result of covid-19 infection or related complications and (c) deaths attributed to covid-19 in the last six months.

UK Health Security Agency are continually monitoring trends in COVID-19, to inform the Government on the spread, severity and impact of COVID-19. Long term trends must be interpreted with caution, as they can be affected by changes in dominant variant, timing of vaccine booster campaigns, seasonality, and changes to testing policy.

Over the last six months, trends have shown that cases of COVID-19 are seen to increase approximately every three months before returning to a baseline. This was seen over the Christmas period, and there has been a slow increase over March that has returned to baseline. Overall, the peaks are smaller than those seen in previous waves, peaking at 8,236 cases per day in December 2022 compared to a peak of 30,388 in July 2022.

Hospital admission due to COVID-19 tend to mirror cases of COVID-19. Over the last six months there have been peaks in hospital admissions over the Christmas period and a slow increase over March that has begun to decrease. Admissions peaks are similar or smaller than those seen previously, peaking at 1,376 admissions per day in December 2022, 1,418, in October 2022 and 2,005 in July 2022.

For deaths attributed to COVID-19, where COVID-19 is recorded on the death certificate/registration, over the last six months there has been an increase in deaths over the early January period, and a slow increase in April 2023. Peaks in deaths have been similar or lower to those seen previously, peaking at 126 per day in Jan 2023, 111 in Oct 2022, and 189 in July 2022.