COVID-19 Surveillance Reports

From Sunday 19 April the Department of Health will be releasing the daily statistics on coronavirus (COVID-19) which will be available at www.health-ni.gov.uk  

The daily update from the Department of Health replaces the Daily Bulletin published by the PHA up to 19 April 2020.

COVID-19 is a new illness that can affect your lungs and airways. It's caused by a type of virus called Sars-CoV-2 (coronavirus).

The Public Health Agency Health Protection surveillance team has established surveillance systems which are used to monitor COVID-19 activity in Northern Ireland. The systems allow us to monitor trends, inform public health measures to reduce COVID-19 transmission, and to measure the impact of public health measures to reduce COVID-19 transmission in both hospital and community settings. 

As this is an emerging pandemic the systems used will constantly evolve and the complexity of the analysis will increase. All updates will be documented here.

The current surveillance systems include:

1. Virology laboratory reports of COVID-19 test results

Currently, COVID-19 testing is performed in patients who:

• have clinical evidence of COVID-19 Disease (clinical or radiological evidence of pneumonia OR acute respiratory distress syndrome OR influenza like illness)

or

• a healthcare worker or household member with or without symptoms

• Data source: laboratory reports from Regional Virus Laboratory, NHSCT (testing started 23/03/2020), SHSCT (testing started 28/03/2020) and WHSCT (testing started 03/04/2020)
• Reporting frequency: Daily
• Reporting period: Data is extracted at 0915 every morning and reflects the previous 24 hour period,  this includes people that may have had a test taken in previous days due to processing times
• Analysis: Testing summary (including positivity percentage), age and sex breakdown, mapping

2. Clinician reported deaths

• Case definition: Patients who have died within 28 days of first positive test result, whether or not COVID-19 was the cause of death
• Data source: clinician reports from HSC Trusts, Regional Virus Laboratory and local laboratory reports
• Reporting frequency: Daily
• Reporting period: 09.15 am (individuals who have been reported in the previous 24 hours)
• Analysis: currently number of COVID-19 associated deaths per day