Updates

The UK Health Security Agency has launched a new dashboard for infectious diseases, which will serve as a centralised source for infectious disease and outbreak data this winter, making it publicly available. The dashboard will be updated on Thursday each week.

It will initially feature the latest information on a number of respiratory diseases, including Covid-19, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, parainfluenza and rhinovirus. Over time, the data dashboard will be expanded to provide additional health security data, including data relating to incidents of public interest.

High levels of influenza during winter 2022–2023 and outbreaks of a variety of infectious diseases highlighted the need for UKHSA to be alert to many health threats alongside Covid-19. The dashboard will allow the agency to share data on common winter illnesses that can severely impact communities and health services each year. UKHSA has announced the new phase of the SIREN study, SIREN 2.0. This study will see the team continue to work with NHS sites in the coming months to assess the impact that respiratory diseases and their new strains have on healthcare workers and settings. Data from additional winter surveillance of Covid-19 will also help UKHSA to track BA.2.86 and other variants and will feed into the new data dashboard.