Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bethell on 8 January (HL11702), what is the source of those data presented at COVID-19 press conferences which show the percentage of people testing positive in the community for the new variant in English regions; and why those data are not held by Public Health England.

The source of the data presented at the COVID-19 press conferences was the Office for National Statistics’ COVID infection survey. Since 19 January 2021, Public Health England has published twice weekly data on the number of genomically confirmed cases testing positive for one of the new COVID-19 variants. This includes information for England and the devolved administrations.