Hi,
Can anyone help clear this with me. I have come across the following web page on the gov.uk website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/notifications-of-infectious-diseases-noids
Notifications of infectious diseases (NOIDs)
Apparently this is where: 'Registered medical practitioners in England and Wales have a statutory duty to notify their local authority or local Health Protection Team of suspected cases of certain infectious diseases.'
There are individual reports for each week of 2020 and a spreadsheet combining the whole of 2020. The spreadsheet shows 85 reports of COVID-19 being notified, but only for week 52:( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-last-52-weeks ), otherwise, it is not included in the other tabs.
For the weekly reports ( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notifiable-diseases-weekly-reports-for-2020 ) for the peak of the pandemic in April/May, I have chosen week 18, the reported COVID-19 notifications is 664. In week 51 there are 50 reported notifications. I thought the cases were increasing and we are at/beyond the previous peak etc etc.
Can anyone help shed some light on these reports as I feel I may be missing something here.
Thanks.
I am unfamiliar with this but, on a first glance, it seems to be a requirement placed on a GP to notify. Maybe this happened a lot more during the pandemic but, currently, few patients are going to their GP.
That does look to be the case. Thanks for the input.
That's doing the rounds at the moment. Not sure of it's significance.
I did a plot - starts week 11 when covid was included
You are correct. This is a requirement placed on GPs. In the early days of the pandemic, I queried with NHS Scotland why flu seemed to have disappeared from the scene. I was advised they had suspended the notification service because they were too busy. It was restarted around August but the numbers being notified could be counted on the fingers of one hand - for the whole of Scotland. Even now flu prevalence is around 10% of what it usually is at this time of year.
