Question reference: S6W-16144
- Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Date lodged: 29 March 2023
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Current status: Answered by Michael Matheson on 21 April 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of reports that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will pause the COVID-19 Infection Survey, which helps to monitor the prevalence of long Covid, what assessment it has made of any potential impact of an absence of ONS data on the (a) diagnosis and (b) monitoring of cases of long Covid, and how it plans to mitigate any such impact.
Answer
We recognise that accurate local data on long COVID prevalence, distribution across the population and symptoms are needed to forecast and plan for the need for NHS services and specific specialties arising from long COVID.
a. Diagnosis of cases. We do not anticipate that the pausing of the ONS COVID-19 Infection Survey will have any impact on the ability of clinicians to diagnose individuals with long COVID (which includes the case definitions of ‘Ongoing symptomatic COVID-19’ and ‘Post-COVID-19 syndrome’). The identification, assessment and management of patients with long-term effects of COVID-19 in Scotland is guided by the UK-wide clinical guideline developed by the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN), the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). Further information can be accessed at Overview | COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19 | Guidance | NICE .
b. Monitoring of cases. The ONS survey data has provided a valuable means of estimating the prevalence of self-reported long COVID over time in Scotland. While a pause in the COVID-19 Infection Survey (CIS) will create a gap in the tracking of time-series data on long COVID, long-term trends in prevalence estimates are unlikely to change markedly within a short timeframe. Further, to improve local data collection, we are already supporting activity with NHS National Services Scotland’s long COVID Strategic Network. The Network is taking forward a dedicated workstream to agree outcomes, indicators, monitoring and evaluation to accelerate progress on capturing data to inform the planning of health service provision for people with long COVID.