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Health and Care Monthly Update

August 2020, England

This monthly knowledge update brings together information, resources and official statistics on health and care in England. For further queries or to propose a publication to include in a future knowledge update contact us.

Guide to where to find statistics published by different UK countries on COVID-19 deaths and infection rates
Links to statistics on coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths and infection rates published by the different constituent countries of the UK.

COVID-19 related releases:

NHS Test and Trace statistics (England)
Department of Health and Social Care provides experimental statistics of the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing in England.

Wider impacts of COVID-19 on health monitoring tool
National monitoring tool published by Public Health England that brings together metrics to assess the wider impacts of COVID-19 on health.

Excess mortality in England: weekly reports
Public Health England report on weekly excess mortality in England broken down by age, sex, region, ethnic group, level of deprivation, cause of death and place of death.

Deaths of homeless people involving COVID-19, England and Wales
Office for National Statistics publication on deaths of homeless people that involved the coronavirus (COVID-19) registered in England and Wales between 26 March and 26 June 2020.

PPE deliveries (England)
Experimental statistics provided by Department of Health and Social Care showing the latest number of personal protective equipment (PPE) items distributed for use by health and social care services in England.

COVID-19: number of outbreaks in care homes – management information
This Public Health England publication presents weekly number and percentage of care homes reporting a suspected or confirmed outbreak of COVID-19 to PHE by local authorities, regions and PHE centres.

Tracking Healthcare Activity and Outcomes for Shielded Patients, England
This NHS digital publication considers data relating to emergency admissions, mortality and positive COVID-19 tests for a subset of patients on the English Shielded Patient List (SPL) compared with an age-matched sample of the general population.

International comparisons of European mortality data 
Office for National Statistics analysis of all-cause mortality data published by the European Union statistics office (Eurostat) to calculate excess mortality during 2020.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) infections in the community in England
Office for National Statistics data about the characteristics of people testing positive for COVID-19 from the COVID-19 Infection Survey. This survey is being delivered in partnership with the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester and Public Health England.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) care homes study report
This study by Department of Health and Social Care provides a summary of antigen testing in all care homes for those over 65 years old in England and survey results of managers of those homes. Office for National Statistics also published a report on impact of coronavirus in care homes in England.

Deaths involving COVID-19 by local area and socioeconomic deprivation: deaths occurring between 1 March and 30 June 2020
Office for National Statistics report on provisional counts of the number of deaths and age-standardised mortality rates involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) between 1 March and 30 June 2020 in England and Wales.

Release highlights

Prevalence of adult smokers in the UK continues to fall across all age groups in 2019

The proportion of smokers in the UK continuous to fall, it is estimated that 14.1% of adults in the UK smoke. This equates to around 6.9 million people. This trend is prevalent across all 4 nations. However, of the constituent countries, Northern Ireland had the highest proportion of smokers in 2019 (15.5%). Since 2011, the largest fall in smoking prevalence has been among 18 to 24-year old; decrease from 25.7% in 2011 to 16% in 2019. While adults aged 25 to 34 years have the highest rates of current smokers (19% around 1.6 million people). Percentage of e-cigarette users aged 16 and over has decreased in 2019 to 5.7% from 6.3% in 2018. In 2019, overall men aged 16 and over were more likely to smoke e-cigarettes than women, 6.1% compared to 5.4%. However, women aged 25 to 34 have the highest rate of 10.5% across all genders and age groups.

Office for National Statistics • Public Health England
Annual
Country • Region • PHE Centre • Country • Local Authority • Clinical Commissioning Groups • Health Boards

Source: Office for National Statistics and Public Health England

Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) monthly data shows lowest number of referrals to taking therapies in April 2020

In April 2020 there were 57,814 referrals to taking therapies. This is 75,377 less than number of referrals in April 2019 (133,191) and 50,516 less than number of referrals in March 2020 (108,330). The number of referrals which entered the treatment in April 2020 was 62,375. This number has decreased from 96,046 in previous month. Of those who started the treatment, 86.2% started the treatment within 6 weeks; a 0.9% drop from previous month. April 2020 has the lowest percentage of recovery in comparison to the last 12 months (46.6%).

NHS Digital
Monthly
England • Clinical Commissioning Groups

Women progressively delaying childbearing with steadily increase of fertility rates for women aged over 40 years since 1978

Number of live births in England and Wales has decreased for the fourth consecutive year to 640,370 in 2019 (16,706 live births less compared to 2018) with a record low lumber of still births at 2,522 (6.2% decrease from 2018). In 2019, fertility rates for women under 20 years were lower (11.2 per 1,000) than rates for women aged 40 years and over (16.5 per 1,000). The fertility rate fell for all age groups except women aged 40 and over which has been increasing since 1978. The average age of mother at childbirth in 2019 was 30.7 years.

Office for National Statistics
Annual
England and Wales

Number of patients who die following hospitalisation continue to decrease to 291,000 for period March 2019 to February 2020

There were approximately 9.5 million discharges between 1 March 2020 to 29 February 2020, of which 291,000 deaths were recorded either while in hospital or within 30 days of discharge. Of the 129 trusts involved, 14 trusts had lower than expected number of deaths within the 30 days of being discharged from hospital and 11 trusts had higher than expected number of deaths. 104 trusts had number of deaths within the expected range.

NHS Digital
Monthly
England • NHS Trusts

Upcoming releases

NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded Nursing care (Q1, 2020/21)

NHS England statistics relating to the activity of NHS Continuing Healthcare in England. Categories of activity covered include eligibility, referrals, conversion rates, requests for review of eligibility decision and decision support tools.

Bed availability and occupancy- Q1 2020/21

NHS England quarterly publication from all NHS organisations that operate beds, open overnight or day only.

Autism Statistics (Q1, 2020/21 to Q4 2019/20)

Waiting times for autism diagnostic pathways, using both a forward-modelling approach based on referrals for suspected autism and a reverse-modelling approach based on known diagnoses of autism. By mental health provider and split by age group, gender and ethnicity.

Things to note

• COVID-19: impacts on health - reports and tools
  Produced by Public Health England, this webpage collates reports and tools which relate to coronavirus (COVID-19).
• UK adult social care statistics landscape
  Interactive tool for exploring the landscape of official adult social care statistics produced in the UK.

• Obesity is not inevitable: a personal view
  Obesity is not inevitable for individuals or for countries, but neither is it easy to avoid or reverse it. The environment we all live in can often make it hard for all of us to consistently make healthy choices these days.

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Useful links

Use our interactive landscape for a full list of health and care statistical releases for England.

Health and Care statistics landscape

Visit our page on the Government Statistical Service website for more information about Health and Care statistics.

Government Statistical Service website

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