Intelligence to support planning

Coronavirus recorded in Primary Care

We completed analysis that examines trends in confirmed and suspected cases of coronavirus recorded in primary care settings.

The analysis was commissioned by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and focused on cases in England with specific drill downs by region, age, sex, socio economic status and ethnic group.

The report provides new insights into the extent and patterns of coronavirus cases during the early phases of the pandemic when testing was less widely available. The report will be published on 20 May 2021.

Coronavirus in your area

We reached 3 million views of the coronavirus in your area dashboard on 16 March 2021.

This dashboard provides the number of coronavirus cases confirmed by a lab test and the number of triages where coronavirus is suspected (following assessment of symptoms by 111 telephony service) over a 7 day period for a local area.

Users can select the postcode of interest and the size of area they wish to view (based on the distance from the postcode). The dashboard provides a view of cases and triages along with a comparison of the numbers in the selected postcode with those reported for neighbourhoods within the area of interest.

Ten coronavirus dashboards have now been developed for public and private use, providing visibility on case numbers in local areas, vaccination update, data quality, the Shielded Patients List, testing, and participation in research.

GP data

We continued to collect and analyse data from GP systems as part of the pandemic response, to support urgent, coronavirus related planning and research needs including identifying those most vulnerable to coronavirus, rolling out vaccines, and testing treatments.

NHS Digital has been directed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to establish a new strategic system to provide the data required to plan health and care services and facilitate research going forward beyond the coronavirus pandemic.

As part of the establishment of this new General Practice Data for Planning and Research (GPDPR) service, we published a Data Provision Notice on 12 May 2021 for a collection from general practices in England of pseudonymised patient data which can be made available through NHS Digital to planners and researchers for approved health and social care purposes. The data collection will start on 1 July 2021.