On behalf of the RSS, president Dr Andrew Garrett has responded to module one of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, which focuses on pandemic preparedness and resilience.
In evidence submitted earlier this year that has now been published by the inquiry, the RSS stresses the importance of statistics and data in informing our understanding of the pandemic. It also highlights the crucial role statisticians played in analysing data to understand the effectiveness of healthcare interventions.
The submission makes 12 recommendations, including a call for better data on social care, a small-scale health surveillance programme, and personal identification numbers to be used more widely to improve research record linkage.
The recommendations, in brief, are as follows:
- Instigate a review of the UK’s new health and social care data landscape
- Continue the production and publication of official statistics regarding care homes, and focus on developing integrated social care data
- Develop a plan for a small-scale continuous health surveillance programme that could be scaled up rapidly when needed
- Review and re-design the First Few Hundred (FF100) study approach
- Use personal identification numbers more widely across the UK to improve research record linkage
- Further develop Trusted Research Environments (TREs) for sharing government and NHS data with researchers
- Legislate to ensure that registration of the fact-of-death is not delayed when a death is referred to the coroner in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
- Prepare mechanisms for engaging relevant expert statisticians and increase investment in statistical training for policymakers
- Develop an optimal strategy for evaluating the effectiveness of treatments and vaccine programmes
- Well-designed studies that evaluate diagnostic tests in the real-world settings must become standard practice
- Ensure that communication of data and analysis during a pandemic is independent and non-political – in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
- Include plans to enable rapid replication of the UK’s world-leading data dashboards as part of preparedness protocols.
Read the evidence in full