Dear Ed,
Temporary Alternative Release Time request for Viral respiratory diseases in Scotland surveillance report on 24/12/2025 and 31/12/2025
I am writing to formally request a temporary alternative release time for the Weekly Viral Respiratory Diseases in Scotland report. This would normally take place on Thursdays at 9:30am.
This year Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fall on a Thursday so we are unable to publish on these dates. Our proposal is to publish instead on Wednesday 24th and 31st December at 12:30pm. The statistics are available late on the Tuesday each week and we are confident that, with additional resource, we can complete the necessary quality assurance to continue to update the dashboard and make the statistics available on the Wednesday at 12.30pm in these two weeks (i.e. the day before usual publication).
Moving the date and time of this publication will allow Public Health Scotland (PHS) to maintain its commitment to providing weekly statistical data on viral respiratory diseases throughout the winter months. Due to continuing high levels of activity which is leading to increased public interest in the data, we believe that it is in the best public interest to continue producing weekly figures over this period.
Please note that PHS operates a robust on-call service to manage media and other enquiries throughout all public holidays. Any issues or queries that arise post-publication will be managed appropriately by trained public health professionals with input from me as Head of Profession if required.
Yours sincerely,
Scott Heald
Director, Data and Digital Innovation
Head of Profession for Statistics
Related
Alternative release times requested under the Code of Practice for Statistics