Anti-nucleocapsid antibody data from SARS-CoV-2 infection survey

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Office for National Statistics should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Office for National Statistics,

Please provide data on the proportion of the population testing positive by anti-SARS-CoV-2-nucleocapsid assay, as a time course since you began collecting these data in March 2021 (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationa...). This release could take different forms with different stratifications (age would be especially useful), but a minimal dataset would simply be the number testing positive and negative by this assay each week.

Yours faithfully,

T Sanderson

system@share.ons.gov.uk,

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FOI Team, Office for National Statistics

Our Reference: FOI/2021/3415

 

Good morning,

 

Thank you for your email requesting data pertaining to the proportion of
the general population testing positive by anti-SARS-CoV-2 and
nucleocapsid antigens.

 

I am writing to confirm that the Office for National Statistics has now
completed its search for the information which you requested and the
response can be found here:

[1]https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transpare...

 

You have the right to have this response to your Freedom of Information
request reviewed internally by an internal review process and, if you
remain unhappy with the decision, by the Information Commissioner. If you
would like to have the decision reviewed please email the Freedom of
Information Team at ‘[ONS request email]’ or write to The FoI Team, Room
1100, Office for National Statistics, Segensworth Road, Titchfield PO15
5RR, and mark your correspondence "Internal Review".

If you have any queries about this email, please contact the Freedom of
Information Team ('[ONS request email]').

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
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The Freedom of Information Team

Office for National Statistics

 

For information on Coronavirus, please visit [2]ONS.gov.uk/coronavirus

 

References

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2. http://ons.gov.uk/coronavirus

Dear FOI Team,

Thank you for your response.

You wrote:

"You may be interested in this article [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-0... by our academic partners on anti-spike antibody response to natural SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population, which includes data on levels of nucleocapsid antigens from the start of the COVID-19 Infection Survey, 26 April 2020 to 14 June 2021."

I do not believe this to be accurate. I was unable to find information on levels of nucleocapsid antigens (which are proteins rather than transcripts), nor antibodies against them, in this paper. Could you clarify this point?

The exemption you have outlined under Section 22 is very broad, and appears to suggests the ONS would never release data on the basis of the public interest test. I would be grateful for an explanation of why *in this specific case*, the public interest favours witholding this information. Are there specific issues with this assay that mean that high quality data is not at present available, or that lead to uncertainty in the data's quality?

Yours sincerely,

T Sanderson

Dear FOI Team,

This data, which you have ceased to collect in January 2022, remains inaccessible. Please can you confirm whether you still have a settled intention to publish this data.

Furthermore, you appear to have edited your public response to this query some time since my message of 3 March 2022, to remove the paragraph that I referred to.

Your original response can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/202201201542...

While the current response is here: https://archive.ph/lUt14

The text below has been removed:
"You may be interested in this article by our academic partners on anti-spike antibody response to natural SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population, which includes data on levels of nucleocapsid antigens from the start of the COVID-19 Infection Survey, 26 April 2020 to 14 June 2021."

While I welcome the correction, I would suggest that it is not ideal that it was made silently to a document still dated 19 Jan, entitled "We said", particularly given that my request for clarification did not receive a reply.

I acknowledge the crucial role that the ONS has played in collecting and releasing high quality data during the pandemic.

Yours sincerely,

T Sanderson

FOI Team, Office for National Statistics

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Good Afternoon

 

Thank you for your email.

 

Please accept my apologies for the delay in our response to you. After you
had brought to our attention the error in our response to you, I submitted
a request to get this removed from the website to avoid any further
confusion for other members of the public. Following this, we have been
looking into your request for internal review of your response, which,
unfortunately, has taken longer than anticipated.

 

However, the internal review of our response to you is now completed and
attached to this email. Please do not hesitate to contact us should you
have any further questions.

 

Kind regards

 

Steph Turner | Legal Services

UK Statistics Authority | Awdurdod Ystadegau’r Deyrnas Unedig |
[1]@UKStatsAuth | [2]http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk

 

[3]ONS.gov.uk/coronavirus

 

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