Dr Julian Lewis: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason data on the number of people admitted to hospital with covid-19 more than three weeks after having been vaccinated against covid-19 (a) once and (b) twice is not being collected; and if he will take immediate steps to implement a system for the (i) collection and (ii) daily publication of that data. [173990]
[Due for Answer on 13 April.]
ANSWER
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for COVID-19 Vaccine Deployment (Nadhim Zahawi): Data on the number of people admitted to hospital with COVID-19 more than three weeks after having been vaccinated with either one dose or two doses is being collected through Public Health England’s (PHE) Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Watch surveillance system. These data are used for vaccine effectiveness studies and for vaccine impact analysis.
PHE has published early data on vaccine effectiveness based on pillar two positive results in those who are over 80 years old which is linked to the national emergency care dataset. This analysis differentiates those who are unvaccinated, those who are within two weeks of first dose and those who are more than two weeks on from their first dose. This analysis is available at the following link:
PHE has no plans to publish data on a daily basis as there is a lag before hospitalisations are observed. In addition, analysis needs to allow for a vaccine induced immune response to be able to measure risk of hospitalisation from time since first and second dose of a vaccine.