Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information (a) his Department, (b) NHS England, (c) Public Health England and (d) NHS Test & Trace holds on transmission routes of covid-19 in different geographical areas and their relative importance; and if he will make it his policy to publish that information.

To help understand the circumstances in which COVID-19 is transmitted, a wide variety of real-time data at both local and national level is published in the Weekly COVID19 Surveillance Report on GOV.UK.

The virus is transmitted when a contact spends time with someone who has COVID-19. This includes face-to-face contact (for one minute), being coughed on, or spending more than 15 minutes within two metres of someone with COVID-19. While those who test positive cannot say for certain where (event) they picked up the infection, they can indicate possible places. Data from 13 to 20 September shows the most common potential event positive cases indicated where they may have picked up the virus as eating out (14.6%), followed by shopping (13.4%). Then for contacts of a known positive case this was indicated from within households (59.8%), followed by visiting the positive case in their household (13.7%).

We currently do not have this information published by geographical area.