COVID-19 weekly surveillance report

The Isle of Man Government Public Health Directorate publish a weekly report which provides a summary of indicators used to understand the status of Covid-19 in the Isle of Man.

Weekly reports can be found below, and this page is updated every Thursday with the previous weeks’ report.

The purpose of the public health surveillance report is to provide a clear and trusted data source which will help individuals, businesses and the wider community to make positive choices about how they manage the risk of COVID-19.

Whilst COVID-19 remains in our community, everyone is encouraged to consider wearing a face covering when in close contact, enclosed and confined places, as well as to maintaingood hygiene, and increase space and ventilation. View more information on the current guidance.

Summary of latest report (12 August 2022)

  • The current 7-day average for reported positive results is around 15

  • The trend of case numbers reported from testing shows a plateau this week.

  • The effective reproduction number (Rt) was 0.9 this week

  • The snapshot census of the Hospital is not available in this week's report

  • The latest ONS Infection Survey[1] shows the percentage of people testing positive for COVID-19 continues to decrease in England, Wales, and Scotland; the trend remained uncertain in Northern Ireland.

Latest Updates

From Thursday 7 July 2022, the Public Health Weekly Surveillance Report will move to a Friday publication. The last Thursday publication of this report will be Thursday 7 July 2022. The period of data reported within each report will remain the same.

Due to reporting changes from Manx Care, data for the daily number of patients in hospital with a confirmed COVID-positive status at time of the daily snapshot is no longer available and has thus been removed.

Due to data updates from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the collection and publication of the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths worldwide has been discontinued as of 20 June 2022. As a result data for 14-day notification rate comparison between the Isle of Man and the United Kingdom has been removed.

This week we have included the first set of results from the Waste Water Surveillance pilot project. This project is a partnership between the Isle of Man government and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The project aims to investigate the usefulness of waste water testing to monitor levels of infectious disease on Island, including SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), enterovirus (a family of viruses which includes the 'winter vomiting bug' norovirus) and influenza. The first report from the project is included in full in Appendix 2.

Due to data updates from the Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases on sub-national Effective Reproduction Number (Rt) being discontinued as of the 31/04/2022, data for Rt Area Comparison has been removed from the Public Health Weekly Surveillance Report.

Due to changes in the Lateral Flow Testing system as of 01/04/2022, data for active PCR and LFT cases has been removed from the Public Health Weekly Surveillance Report.

Due to changes in operational notifications systems to align with the Public Health Weekly Surveillance Report's methodology, the data for unconfirmed COVID deaths has been removed and will not feature in future reports. Confirmed COVID related deaths data will continue to be published.

This report is provided for transparency, and readers are encouraged to think carefully about the measures we each can take to prevent further spread of COVID-19.

Wave Surveillance

This week saw a decrease or plateau in case numbers across all age groups. The effective reproduction number (Rt) increased from 0.5 to 0.9 this week. It is worth noting that Rt values, as seen in the daily Rt table (Appendix 1), are sensitive to large fluctuations when daily case numbers are small. Therefore, consideration should be taken of other epidemiological data to gain a true understanding of patterns of spread.

Case ascertainment and calculation of the reproduction number is, of course, dependent on patterns of testing and reporting so it is likely that there are more cases than are currently notified. This caveat has applied throughout the pandemic when COVID-19 has been transmitting on Island, although the change to LFD self testing and self reporting may have impacted on that to an unknown extent. Further changes to testing guidance published on 1 April 2022 are likely having an additional impact. This week we have seen a slight increase in seven day average daily reporting from 14 to 15.

It should be noted that due to the differences in testing strategies on the Isle of Man compared to the UK, comparisons are shown for guidance only.

Reviewed: August 2022