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UK health officials said on Monday they would stop publishing their routine Covid-19 infection modeling data in the new year as it is seen as “no longer necessary” as the country moves into a phase of living with the virus. Vaccines and Medicines.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it would continue to monitor Covid like other common viral illnesses such as seasonal flu. Since April this year, data on the reproduction rate, or R value, the speed at which the novel coronavirus infects people, has been published fortnightly as a monitoring tool.
Dr Nick Watkins, Chair of the UKHSA Epidemiology Modeling Review Group (EMRG), said, “During an epidemic, the R value and growth rate serve as useful and simple indicators to inform public health action and government decisions.”
“Now that vaccines and therapeutics have allowed us to get to the stage where we’re living with Covid-19, surveillance is being reduced,” he said.
“We continue to monitor Covid-19 activity in the same way we monitor many other common illnesses and diseases. All data releases are kept under constant review and this modeling data can be re-introduced immediately if required,” he added.
The EMRG said its latest detailed review concluded that the next publication of its so-called “consensus statement” on Covid-19 on January 6, 2023, would be the “last”. UK Covid incidence data will continue to be accessible from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Infection Survey.
Beijing, Shanghai residents ‘limp’ back to work
Masked Beijing and Shanghai commuters crowded subway trains on Monday as China’s two largest cities came closer to containing Covid-19, even as frontline medical workers scrambled to deal with millions of new infections.
After three years of strict anti-coronavirus restrictions, President Xi Jinping canceled China’s zero-covid policy of lockdown and unrestricted testing on December 7 due to public protests and the expanding outbreak.
“Our country’s prevention and control of the novel coronavirus epidemic is facing new situations and new tasks,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying.
The virus is now spreading largely unchecked, raising doubts over the figures, which show no new deaths for six days since Sunday.
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