Councils' anger over missing data that could quell new Covid-19 outbreaks
Crucial data that could help prevent fresh local waves of coronavirus is being withheld from some of the places most in danger of further lockdowns, the Guardian has been told.
Council leaders said on Wednesday they were either not getting test results needed to prevent new outbreaks, or the results were incomplete and without sufficient detail to allow them to quell local surges in infection.
The complaints came as Labour accused Boris Johnson of presiding over “a lost week” which has let the virus spread, threatening fresh lockdowns as physical distancing restrictions are loosened this weekend. The government hit back, claiming councils had the information they needed to keep the virus at bay.
Rochdale borough council, which has one of the highest levels of new infections in England after Leicester, told the Guardian the borough had not received any community testing results – known as pillar-two tests. The council leader, Steve Rumbelow, warned the data showing who had tested positive outside of healthcare settings was essential “to ensure that Rochdale does not get to where Leicester is now.”
That appeared to contradict the prime minister’s claim in parliament that all test results – community testing in pillar two and NHS testing in pillar one – “have been shared not just with Leicester but with all authorities across the country”.
The pillar-two results, which were published in full for the first time by Public Health England (PHE) on Wednesday, have shown many more positive tests than those taken in hospitals and so provide a very different picture of where infection rates are moving towards dangerous levels.
Labour said it was not until last Thursday that Leicester city council was told that while pillar-one tests showed 80 positive tests in the last fortnight, the real figure was 944 and within days the city was locked down.
Barnsley, which after Leicester had the highest levels of infections recently alongside Bradford and Rochdale, only started getting community postcodelevel testing data on Wednesday this week.
The information is essential to help local officials intervene in local outbreaks. On Monday they started arriving at Bradford city council and at Cheshire West and Chester, whose council leader, Louise Gittins, complained they were “incomplete, poor quality and difficult to access”. The test results were not always linked to a postcode, age, occupation or ethnic minority data, she said.
Richard Leese, the leader of Manchester city council, also complained the community data included no information about ethnicity, age, occupation, gender or, crucially, postcode of the infected person.
“If you have 10 cases and they are spread out across Wigan, that is one thing,” he said. “If they are all in the same street that’s another thing entirely. We are promised this data. It is the most important piece of data we still need.”
A government source responded that local directors of public health had been offered postcode level data 10 days ago.
“Leicester did not reply for two days, until Wednesday 24 June,” said the source. “Upon hearing from Leicester, we immediately confirmed and issued the datasharing agreement to them.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “Rochdale council has not returned PHE’s data agreement, which is why they have not received the data yet, despite PHE sending it to them twice.”
The data has been collected by PHE since at least the beginning of June, but only the pillar one data was used on its online Coronavirus dashboard.
Local officials are now working hard to apply the data that is coming through and avoid following Leicester into second lockdowns. Prof Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College London – who quit as a government adviser after admitting breaking lockdown rules – warned on Wednesday the UK should be braced for “inevitable” regional flareups.
PHE’s community testing data up to 21 June showed that Bradford, Barnsley and Rochdale had the highest levels of new Covid-19 infections after Leicester.
It raises fresh questions about the disproportionate impact of the virus on ethnic minorities.
Of the other 10 worst affected areas, Bedford, Oldham, Blackburn and Kirklees all have ethnic minority populations of between 20% and 30%, above the average for England. Rotherham, Tameside and Barnsley, which are also in the top 10, all have higher than average white British populations. So far across England 18.1% of the positive tests for the virus were among black, Asian and minority ethnic people, with the largest part of that – almost 10% among people of Asian background, according to Public Health England. The ethnic minority population of England was 15.1% in 2016, according to official estimates.
Leicester was locked down on Monday after the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the seven-day infection rate was 135 cases per 100,000 people, the highest in the country.
Bradford’s rate for the week to 21
June week was 69.4 per 100,000 people, Barnsley’s 54.7 and Rochdale’s 53.6, according to the official figures. More upto-date figures for Rochdale for the week ending 30 June show infections had dropped to 28.8.
A PHE “rapid investigation team” report into the outbreak in Leicester published on Wednesday evening showed that of the 3,216 cases in the city, almost a third, 944 came in the last 14 days. The infection rate recorded in the community was more than four times higher than the average for England.
Leicester MP Liz Kendall said it took “far too long to get even very basic postcode data, which is what we need to identify where the problem is; whether it is in schools, whether it is in certain factories and workplaces. You really do need that detail.”
The British Medical Association also implored the government to ensure local leaders were given timely information about cases in their area to help contain the spread of the virus.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the chairman of the BMA Council, said on Wednesday: “The prime minister has talked about a ‘whack-a-mole’ strategy to tackle local outbreaks, but this is no use if the people leading the response on the ground – be they public health teams or local leaders – are not given the most accurate up-to-date data possible. This is crucial to allow swift action and to protect lives and the health service, and something that is not happening right now. This is all the more important given that the ‘world-leading’ test-andtrace app is not in place, meaning local leaders and teams armed with up-to-date information will be vital in containing spread of outbreaks.”
The Department of Health and Social Care has said it has been “working closely with our local partners, providing them with the resources and tools so that they can take swift action to deal with any new local spikes in infection”.