Dear Ed,
In line with your policy for alternative release times for official statistics, I am writing to formally request an alternative release time of 2pm for the Weekly all-cause mortality surveillance reports.
UKHSA is a partner member of the European Mortality Monitoring (EuroMOMO) network set up to detect and measure, on a near real-time basis, excess number of deaths across participating European countries.
Like all other member countries, UKHSA analyses mortality data for England and Wales using a standardised EuroMOMO algorithm developed by the network to monitor mortality and signals of excess deaths. Key findings from this analysis of data for England and Wales are published as official statistics in the weekly all-cause mortality surveillance reports.
Aggregate data outputs from UKHSA’s analysis are also shared with EuroMOMO analysts based at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark who collate and centrally publish a weekly bulletin covering all participating countries. Weekly EuroMOMO bulletin updates are published each Thursday and provide a source of surveillance data used by health organisations, such as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), to monitor early indications of excess death incidents and any patterns of concern across European countries.
There is public value in the release of both sets of statistics, though the provision of data for inclusion in the weekly EuroMOMO bulletins creates challenge for the statistics production team to meet the standard 9:30am release time for the weekly all-cause mortality surveillance reports. I believe that a 2pm release time for these statistics is necessary for the following reasons:
To balance assured quality with timeliness. The latest weekly data for all deaths in England and Wales is supplied by the General Register Office early on a Wednesday morning and outputs are published on Thursday. The production timescales for these official statistics are currently compressed to 1.5 days to align with the production and release of the weekly EuroMOMO surveillance data. Publishing these statistics at 9:30am on Thursday will further compress the time available to process the data and will increase the risk of the statistics not meeting the quality standards expected of official statistics.
To support orderly release of the statistics. The related EuroMOMO statistics are published on a Thursday afternoon. There is not a fixed release time for the EuroMOMO statistics, and the timing of release is outside of UKHSA’s control. A Thursday release of the weekly all-cause mortality surveillance reports enables alignment with the release of the European statistics as best as possible and allows any UKHSA public health messaging about the two outputs to be made available on the same afternoon. As outlined above, a 9:30am release on a Thursday is not practical, and so a 2pm release on a Thursday better supports the orderly release of these statistics than, for example, a Friday release at the standard time of 9:30am.
To align with other UKHSA statistics with alternative release times. Other related UKHSA statistics with an alternative release time approved by the Office for Statistics Regulation are published at 2pm on a Thursday. Applying the same alternative release time to these statistics enables more coherent communication of statistical messages.
Yours sincerely
Victoria Obudulu