Wider Impacts of COVID-19 on Health (WICH) monitoring tool
The Wider Impacts of COVID-19 on Health (WICH) monitoring tool is designed to allow you to explore the indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the population's health and wellbeing. WICH presents a range of health and wellbeing metrics in interactive plots that can be broken down to show differences between groups - for example, you can explore grocery purchasing habits by region or social class. WICH is updated monthly and may include the addition of new metrics as they become available. A summary has been included for WICH and is available to read.
Metrics
Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) Health Intelligence teams have collated a range of metrics and grouped them into nine themes. Click the rows in the table below to expand groups and subgroups. The link column will take you to the relevant theme within the tool. You can search through metrics using the search bar on the right.
What's new?
Updated 16/06/2022.
A list of all indicators, including those that are new or updated in this release.
Revisions to metrics are recorded in the change log, available to download.
Other resources
On the 5 November, we published a report which provided an in-depth commentary on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on grocery shopping behaviours during March to June 2020.
Feedback
We are interested in your feedback on the tool. If you have any comments or suggested changes, please email EandS-Enquiries@phe.gov.uk
Wider Impacts of COVID-19 on Health (WICH) summary, 16 June 2022
This Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) monitoring tool looks at the wider impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on population health. This report briefly highlights the main findings.
This resource is updated monthly, with new data for existing metrics and new metrics covering relevant themes added when data become available. In some cases, a metric is from a single time point data collection and therefore figures will not be updated. This will be continually reviewed and the resource will be updated as appropriate for relevance and timeliness.
Overview
This summary provides the main messages for some of the metrics updated in this release. It will cover the new indicators for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) screening, breast cancer screening and NHS Health Checks, as well updated themes such as wellbeing, employment and income.
Main messages
New Indicators: Screening
Screening is the process of identifying healthy people who may have an increased chance of a disease or condition and early detection. The screening provider then offers information, further tests and treatment. This is to reduce associated problems or complications.
Between April and June 2020 providers paused screening due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Screening providers restarted at varying times from June 2020 following approval of local plans to make sure that screening was carried out as safely as possible for attendees and staff. Invitations in the breast and Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) screening programmes were prioritised according to risk (see metadata).
Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA)
Men who turned 65 in the screening year (April to the March of the following year) and haven’t had previous AAA surgery are offered a one-off ultrasound scan. Figure 1 shows the proportion of eligible cohort men who are screened for an AAA. The data is cumulative across the screening year. By the end of quarter 4 in 2017 to 2018, 2018 to 2019 and 2019 to 2020, approximately 77% of eligible men were screened.
The 4.4% shown in quarter 1 2020 to 2021 were eligible men who were screened early, prior to April 2020. Ongoing issues with access to venues, availability of staff and longer appointment times had an impact on the coverage of AAA screening. By the end of quarter 4 2020 to 2021 only 42.4% of eligible cohort men had been screened. By the end of quarter 2 2021 to 2022 coverage was below 43%, the national average for the same period in previous years but higher than the 8.8% reported by the end of quarter 2 2020 to 2021.
Figure 1: Proportion of eligible cohort men who have had a screen for an abdominal aortic aneurysm, April 2017 to September 2021, England
Source: Screening key performance indicators, NHS England and NHS Improvement
Figure 2 shows the proportion of annual surveillance appointments for AAA where there is a conclusive scan within 6 weeks of when the appointment is due each quarter (coverage). The annual surveillance scan is for men who are found to have a small aneurysm (aorta measures 3.0 to 4.4cm on ultrasound scan) at their initial screen (includes cohort men aged 65 and men aged over 65 who have self-referred). An annual surveillance scan is offered until the aneurysm reaches 5.5cm, when they are referred for treatment. Prior to the pandemic about 93% of appointments had a conclusive screen in the timeframe.
The proportion of appointments with a conclusive screen within 6 weeks fell to 74.5% in quarter 2 2020 to 2021. This reflects the varying start dates of providers after the pause and men’s reluctance to attend screening appointments early in the pandemic. The coverage of the annual surveillance scan improved to 86.2% in quarter 3 2020 to 2021. Anecdotal reports from providers suggested the decline in coverage to 81.7% in quarter 4 2020 to 2021 was due to men deferring their appointment until their second vaccine. Coverage fell to a low of 57.4% in quarter 1 2021 to 2022. This is mainly a reflection of the fact that very few men were due an appointment in this quarter, as screening was paused for the same quarter in the previous year.
Figure 2: Proportion of annual abdominal aortic aneurysm surveillance appointments due where there is a conclusive scan within 6 weeks either side of the due date, April 2017 to September 2022, England
Source: Screening key performance indicators, NHS England and NHS Improvement
Figure 3 shows the proportion of quarterly surveillance appointments for AAA where there is a conclusive scan within 4 weeks of when the appointment is due each quarter (coverage). The quarterly surveillance scan is for men who are found to have a medium aneurysm (aorta measures 4.5 to 5.4cm on ultrasound scan) at their initial screen (includes cohort men aged 65 and men aged over 65 who have self-referred) or at their annual surveillance scan. Prior to the pandemic about 93% of appointments had a conclusive screen in the timeframe.
The proportion of appointments with a conclusive screen within 4 weeks fell to 76.6% in quarter 2 2020 to 2021. This reflects the varying start dates of providers following the pause and men’s reluctance to attend screening appointments early in the pandemic. The coverage of the quarterly surveillance scan has recovered to pre-pandemic levels of approximately 93%. There was a slight dip in quarter 3 2020 to 2021 to 88.8%. As noted above, this may reflect a desire to have their second vaccine before attending an appointment.
Figure 3: Proportion of quarterly abdominal aortic aneurysm surveillance appointments due where there is a conclusive scan within 4 weeks either side of the due date, April 2017 to September 2022, England
Source: Screening key performance indicators, NHS England and NHS Improvement
Breast cancer screening
Figure 4 shows the proportion of eligible women aged 50 to less than 71 who had a technically adequate breast screen within 6 months of their date of first offered appointment (uptake). Between April 2017 and December 2019 uptake was approximately 67% and it had declined from 77% in 2011.
In a bid to maximise the use of available appointments many providers changed to offering open appointments, where a woman receives a letter asking her to call to book an appointment. This required a change to the IT system used for breast screening and it affected how the system counted when an invitation had been made and could increase the time period between when the letter is sent to a woman and when she attends for a screen. This prevented the uptake being accurately measured during 2020 to 2021. For quarters 1 and 2 2021 to 2022 uptake was approximately 56%.
Figure 4 Proportion of eligible women who have a technically adequate screen less than or equal to 6 months of date of first offered appointment, April 2017 to September 2022, England
Source: Screening key performance indicators, NHS England and NHS Improvement
Figure 5 shows the proportion of eligible women who have had a previous invitation for breast screening, that have a subsequent invitation within 36 months (this proportion is known as the screening round length). It is important for women to receive a timely invitation in order to increase the chances of finding cancers early but reduce the harms of over diagnosis and radiation exposure. Breast screening round length has declined from 90.6% in quarter 1 2017 to 2018 to 81.8% in quarter 4 2019 to 2020.
Due to the number of women requiring screening that built up during the pause in screening many invitations were delayed. The screening round length of 21% in quarter 1 2021 to 2022 reflects the difficulties providers had with recovering from the effects of the pandemic on service provision. Screening round length is expected to improve as screening providers reduce the number delayed invitations.
Figure 5: Proportion of eligible women whose date of first offered appointment is less than or equal to 36 months of their previous episode*, April 2017 to September 2022, England
* The previous episode refers to date of screening for women who attended or date of first offered appointment for women who did not attend
Source: Screening key performance indicators, NHS England and NHS Improvement
New Indicator: NHS Health Checks received
The NHS Health Check programme aims to prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes and kidney disease, and some cases of dementia among adults aged 40 to 74 years who do not have an existing diagnosis of cardiovascular disease. Local areas are required to offer a check to all eligible people over a 5 year period. To meet this requirement, it is expected that about 5% of eligible people are invited for a check each quarter.
Figure 6 shows the proportion of eligible people who had an NHS Health Check each quarter since 2018 to 2019. It illustrates that the number of people having a check dropped in 2020 to 2021 and had not recovered by September 2021. Delivery of the programme – which is commissioned by local government and provided mainly in NHS primary care settings, was deprioritised because of the pandemic and in line with national guidance from NHS England. This resulted in phases of stop-start and restart of the programme, between April 2020 and February 2022. Local areas started to recover the service after this. However nearly three-times less checks were delivered in the first half of 2021to 2022 compared to similar time periods prior to the pandemic.
Figure 6: Percentage of NHS Health Checks received by the total eligible population in the quarter
Source: OHID analysis of NHS Health Checks data
Wellbeing
In this release, metrics on wellbeing and loneliness have been updated.
Figure 7 shows that from the three-month period to 14 June 2020, through to the latest three-month period ending 17 April 2022, a greater percentage of respondents in the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey reported low life satisfaction than in 2019 (5.7%). In the three months to 14 March 2021 (third national lockdown), low life satisfaction peaked at 13.8%, significantly higher than in the most recent three months to 17 April 2022 when 8.7% of respondents reported low life satisfaction.
Figure 7: Trend in the percentage of respondents reporting low life satisfaction (score 0-4), three-month rolling average, England, June 2020 to April 2022
Source: OHID analysis of Opinions and Lifestyle Survey data from Office for National Statistics, 2022
Between the three-month periods ending 18 October 2020 and ¬13 December 2020, the lowest earners (up to £10,000) had a significantly higher percentage of respondents with low life satisfaction compared with all other respondents (Figure 8). However, recent data shows this gap has narrowed with lowest earners having more similar low life satisfaction levels to respondents with annual incomes of £10,000 up to £15,000 and £15,000 up to £20,000.
Figure 8: Trend in the percentage of respondents reporting low life satisfaction (score 0-4), three-month rolling average, by annual income (£), England
Source: OHID analysis of Opinions and Lifestyle Survey data from Office for National Statistics, 2022
Between June 2020 and April 2022, the percentage of respondents reporting high anxiety was significantly higher than in 2019 (Figure 9). Figure 10 shows that in the three-month period to 14 February 2021, 45.9% of unemployed respondents had high anxiety, significantly higher than those who were economically inactive (36.5%) and employed or self-employed (34.7%). The latest data to 17 April 2022 show that the percentage of unemployed people reporting high anxiety (39.4%) remained significantly higher than those who are employed or self-employed (32.4%).
Figure 9: Trend in the percentage of respondents reporting high anxiety (score 6-10), three-month rolling average, England, June 2020 to April 2022
Source: OHID analysis of Opinions and Lifestyle Survey data from Office for National Statistics, 2022
Figure 10: Trend in the three-month rolling average percentage of respondents to the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey with high anxiety (score 6-10), in England by economic activity
Source: OHID analysis of Opinions and Lifestyle Survey data from Office for National Statistics, 2022
Employment and Income
After remaining at a fairly constant level throughout 2018 and 2019, the number of job vacancies in the UK more than halved from 820,000 vacancies in the November 2019 to January 2020 quarter, to 367,000 in May to July 2020 when the first lockdown was in place. The number of job vacancies has risen in each quarter since this low point, surpassing the pre-pandemic level and reaching 1,295,000 vacancies in February to April 2022 (Figure 11).
Figure 11: Number of job vacancies in the UK (thousands), seasonally adjusted, from November 2017 to April 2022
Source: Vacancy Survey, Office for National Statistics
The redundancy rate in the UK increased from 4.8 per 1,000 employees in the quarter April to June 2020 to 12.9 per 1,000 employees in the quarter October to December 2020 (Figure 12). In the following quarters the rate decreased sharply, returning to pre-pandemic levels in April to June 2021. In the most recent quarter, January to March 2022, the rate decreased to 2.5 per 1,000 employees which is below pre-pandemic levels.
Figure 12: Redundancy rate (ratio of the number of redundancies in the three months prior to interview to the number of employees) in the UK, by sex, from January 2018 to March 2022
Source: Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics
WICH Summary for download
If you are interested in a summary from an earlier release, please email EandS-Enquiries@phe.gov.uk
How to use this Tool
Use the tabs at the top of the screen to move between the different metric groups.
Each tab provides a visualisation of the selected metric by different breakdowns and the trends over time for the metrics available.
- Select the metric to display in the ‘Indicator’ drop down. The dashboard will populate with the selected data.
- Select the breakdown you would like to display from the ‘Breakdown’ drop down.
- Navigate between viewing charts, data tables and metadata using the tabs in each theme.
- To see a single variable on a chart click on the variable name in the legend.
- View data from previous releases using the 'Release Date' drop down.
Accessibility statement for Wider Impacts of COVID-19 on Health (WICH) monitoring tool
This accessibility statement applies to https://analytics.phe.gov.uk/apps/covid-19-indirect-effects/
This website is run by Public Health England. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
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We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
• The graphs and charts may not be usable if you rely on the keyboard, struggle with colors, or use a screenreader. The data tables associated with each should be more usable.
• Not all the text will be available when you zoom in.
• Some text and graphics do not have sufficient contrast.
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Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Public Health England is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Compliance status
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Navigation
• Graph controls could not be accessed with a keyboard alone
• A feature to skip over the navigation and filters to go directly to the main content was not provided
• It is not possible to dismiss content on the navigation bar that appears on-hover with keyboard only
Images
• A number of icons and images were missing alternative text
Zoom
• Content was lost when the page is zoomed in up to 400% and scrolling occurred in both directions
Colours
• The colour contrast of text and the graph controls was insufficient
Structure
• ARIA landmarks such as main and banner were missing
• The language of the page had not been set
• The current page state is visually communicated but not programmatically communicated
• Important changes in content that occur dynamically are not announced to screen reader users
• Lists were not used to group contents in some areas
• HTML was not nested according to the specification
Graphs
• The graphs require colour vision to interpret, failing Use of Color
• Icons used in the graphs, and some colour combinations fail Non-Text Contrast
• The keyboard controls are not Keyboard accessible
• The graphs do not have alt-text, failing Non-Text Content
• The text within the graphs are not structured, failing Info and Relationships
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
Most of the issues above will be reviewed with the development team and be resolved within 6 months.
The graphs are created using a library, and it has not been possible to find an accessible alternative. The data tables associated with each graph will be updated to ensure they include the same information as the graph.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 23rd September 2021. It was last reviewed on 23rd September.
This website was last tested on 22nd September 2021. The test was carried out by Nomensa. A selection of 10 pages across the site were selected for testing, covering the main templates and types of content (graphs) that are available.
Grocery purchasing and food usage
Social determinants of health
Mental health and wellbeing
Behavioural risk factors
Access to care
Air quality
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Pregnancy and birth
Life expectancy
Mortality
COVID-19 Health Inequalities Monitoring for England (CHIME)
The COVID-19 Health Inequalities Monitoring for England (CHIME) tool brings together data relating to the direct impacts of COVID-19, such as on mortality rates and hospital admissions.
By presenting inequality breakdowns, including by age, sex, ethnic group, level of deprivation and region, the tool provides a single point of access to:
- show how inequalities have changed during the course of the pandemic and what the current cumulative picture is
- bring together data in one tool to enable users to access and utilise the intelligence more easily
- provide indicators with a consistent methodology across different datasets to facilitate understanding
- support users to identify and address inequalities within their areas and identify priority areas for recovery