UKHSA’s Duplication of Surveillance

We need a new surveillance system, apparently, because we had none before.

The Times is a rich source of official government narratives, accepted non-critically and repeated without questioning. We think the best recent example is this piece announcing:

“The UK Health Security Agency will announce plans in the next few weeks to increase surveillance of circulating viruses. The Covid-19 infection survey, which stopped this year, regularly tested a random sample of households, regardless of whether they had symptoms, to determine circulating levels of the virus.

The system is expected to work in a similar fashion but also involve testing samples for more than one type of infection.

At present, there is no widespread testing system for coronavirus or influenza apart from hospital patients. But any rise in hospital admissions tends to lag behind a rise in infections by around a week.”

Readers of TTE will be aware of last winter's snapshots on the latest surveillance data. According to the Times, we are supposed to believe the RCGP surveillance scheme does not test f…