New Covid and flu dashboard launched for England

A new dashboard for tracking outbreaks of winter viruses in England, including Covid and flu, has been launched by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

The dashboard will be updated every Thursday and eventually include regional data.

Officials say high levels of flu last winter highlighted the need to provide and share data on a number of common winter illnesses.

Numbers of Covid patients in hospital have been rising in recent weeks.

This has been linked to the emergence of BA.2.86 - an off-spin of the Omicron variant of Covid-19.

As a result, the roll-out of autumn Covid booster jabs to better protect the most vulnerable was brought forward to early September.

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Professor Steven Riley, director general of data, analytics and surveillance at the UKHSA, said it was vital to provide information on winter viruses "in a timely and transparent way".

He asked the public to contribute to the data: "While our new dashboard will initially focus on respiratory diseases, we will look to expand the information we publish constantly, and we would therefore appreciate your feedback on what you would like to see going forward."

The dashboard will be expanded to show additional data in time, the UKHSA says, which will help officials to track the new sub-variant and other variants that emerge.

The previous dashboard is still working, but will be taken down in due course.