Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the number of cases of Lyme disease in (a) Yeovil constituency, (b) Somerset and (c) the United Kingdom.

Lyme disease is monitored in England and Wales through routine surveillance. The UK Health Security Agency’s Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory provides Lyme disease laboratory testing services for England and Wales and data is published in the quarterly Health Protection Reports, available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/health-protection-report-current-issue-and-latest-surveillance-reports#zoonoses

Data is not collected at constituency level.

The incidence of Lyme disease in Somerset sits higher than the average in England, as in Somerset per 100,000 of the population it is approximately two to four times higher than the average incidence in England.

There has not been an increase in laboratory confirmed cases in Somerset or England over the past seven years, with overall cases remaining stable. There is a fluctuation every year as expected, with more cases some years and less other years, but there has not been a sustained increase.

Yearly fluctuations are expected and driven by several factors including the weather which impacts how people interact with the outdoors. Trends do not show a significant change in laboratory confirmed cases in England since 2018 and cases have remained stable.