Introduction: The first reported UK case of COVID-19 occurred on 30 January 2020. A lockdown from 24 March was partially relaxed on 10 May. One model to forecast disease spread depends on clinical parameters and transmission rates. Output includes the basic reproduction number R0 and the log growth rate r in the exponential phase.Methods: Office for National Statistics data on deaths in England and Wales is used to estimate r. A likelihood for the transmission parameters is defined from a gaussian density for r using the mean and standard error of the estimate. Parameter samples from the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm lead to an estimate and credible interval for R0 and forecasts for cases and deaths.Results: The UK initial log growth rate is r = 0.254 with s.e. 0.004. R0 = 6.94 with 95% CI (6.52, 7.39). In a 12 week lockdown from 24 March with transmission parameters reduced throughout to 5% of their previous values, peaks of around 90,000 severely and 25,000 critically ill patients, and 44,000 cumulative deaths are expected by 16 June. With transmission rising from 5% in mid-April to reach 30%, 50,000 deaths and 475,000 active cases are expected in mid-June. Had such a lockdown begun on 17 March, around 30,000 (28,000, 32,000) fewer cumulative deaths would be expected by 9 June.Discussion: The R0 estimate is compatible with some international estimates but over twice the value quoted by the UK government. An earlier lockdown could have saved many thousands of lives.

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, by age, sex, region and Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), in the latest weeks for which data are available.

Headline estimates for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. 

Occupational registration data was linked to anonymised electronic health records maintained by the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank in a privacy-protecting trusted research environment. We examined records for all linked care workers from 1st March 2016 to 30th November 2021.

Domiciliary Care Workers (DCWs) are employed in both public and private sectors to support adults at home. The support they provide varies but often includes personal care, which demands close contact between care worker and the person being supported. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, people working across the care sectors in England and Wales have experienced higher rates of death involving COVID-19 infection. Social care workers, in both residential and domiciliary care settings, have been particularly badly affected, with rates of death involving COVID-19 approximately double that for health care workers.

We do not fully understand the full impact on domiciliary care worker mortality, how COVID-19 has affected worker health more broadly, and the risk factors which contribute to these. Existing evidence on deaths from the ONS relies on occupational classification. However, for many individuals reported as dying with some COVID-19 involvement, information on occupation is missing (18% and 40% missing for males and females respectively). The impact of COVID-19 on the health of domiciliary care workers (DCWs) is therefore likely to be considerable, including on COVID-19 infection itself, mental health, and respiratory illnesses. We aim to generate rapid high-quality evidence based on the views of care workers and by linking care workers' registration data to routine health data. We can use this information to inform public health interventions for safer working practice and additional support for care workers.

Our study will use a combination of research methods. We will use existing administrative data involving carer professional registration records as well as health care records. Our analysis of these data will be guided in part by qualitative interviews that we will conduct with domiciliary care workers in Wales. The interviews will address the experiences of care workers during the course of the pandemic.

Registration data for care workers in Wales will be securely transferred from the regulatory body, Social Care Wales (SCW) to the Secured Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank at Swansea University. These data will be combined with anonymised health records made available from the SAIL databank. Information which could be used to identify individual care workers will be removed in this process. We expect that this will create a research database of all domiciliary care workers in Wales, approximately 17,000 individuals. From this group we will also identify about 30 care workers to be approached via SCW to take part in a qualitative interview. The interview sample will be chosen so that it includes workers from a variety of backgrounds.

In our analysis, we will describe the socio-demographic characteristics of the group of care workers in the research database, for example, their average age. We will establish the number of care workers with both suspected and confirmed COVID-19 infection. Will explore how infection with COVID-19 has impacted on key health outcomes, including whether workers were admitted to hospital or died. We will also explore the health of care workers before and during COVID-19 pandemic. We will use the information gained from interviews with care workers to guide the way we analyse the health records of the care workers. Finally, we will examine how well the results from our analysis of care workers in Wales can be used inform what may be happening for workers in other countries in the UK.

To ensure that our findings will be of most use to those working in social care, we will work with an Implementation Reference Group. The group will include key stakeholders such as representatives from regulators from across the UK. Working with this group, we will provide rapid recommendations to drive public health initiatives for care worker safety. This may include changes in working practices and longer-term service planning to support care worker health needs.

Approximately 14.8 percent of people aged 16 to 24 were unemployed in the United Kingdom in the fourth quarter of 2024, the highest of any age group in that month. During this time period, older age groups have had much lower unemployment rates than younger ones, who have consistently had the highest unemployment rate. For almost all the age groups, the peak in the unemployment rate was recorded in 2011 when almost a quarter of young working age people were unemployed. Young adults in the labor market In the provided time period, youth unemployment was at its lowest rate in the third quarter of 2022, when it was 10.3 percent. Since then, there has been a noticeable uptick in youth unemployment, which was 14.8 percent towards the end of 2024. A more long-term trend among this age group is the increase in economic inactivity, with 40.8 percent of 16 to 24-year-old's not in work or actively looking for work in 2024. Although students or people in training account for a high share of this economic inactivity, there has also been a rise in the proportion of young adults who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), which reached a ten-year-high of 13.2 percent in late 2024. Unemployment up from low baseline in late 2024 In 2022, the UK labor market, had very low levels of unemployment along with a record number of job vacancies. Throughout 2023 and 2024, this very tight labor market began to loosen, although is still quite low by historic standards. One indicator that has stood out since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, has been the number of people economically inactive due to being on long-term sick leave, which reached 2.82 million in the first quarter of 2024, and has been the main reason for economic inactivity in the UK since late 2021.

Summary of key COVID-19 Statistics in NSW, VIC, and WA, as of October 11th 2021.

Australian Public Health Measures and Economy Costs by Stringency of Public Health Measures.

Number of deaths registered each month by area of usual residence for England and Wales, by region, county, health authorities, local and unitary authority, and London borough.

Approximately 28 percent of people in Wales advised that they were able to speak Welsh in 20224. The share of people who could speak Welsh ranged from over three-quarters of the population in Gwynedd, located in the North West of Wales, to 14.5 percent in Blaenau Gwent, a small county borough in the South East of the country.

The quarterly legal aid statistics bulletin presents statistics on the legal aid scheme administered by the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) for England and Wales. This edition comprises the first release of statistics for the three month period from July to September 2022 and also provides the latest statement of figures for all earlier periods. This edition also includes figures on Criminal Legal Aid Reform accelerated measures. These statistics are derived from data held by LAA, produced and published by Legal Aid Statistics team of the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). Link to Data visualisation tool, a web-based tool allowing the user to view and customize charts and tables based on the published statistics.

This publication shows that expenditure across civil legal aid has increased year on year and has also increased more over the recent quarters. Following recovery from the impact of the pandemic, criminal legal aid expenditure has fallen in the most recent quarter due to strike action in the Crown Court in which impacted workload completed within the period.

Statistician’s Comment

Criminal legal aid workload for representation at the courts had returned to levels seen before covid but in the last few quarters we’ve seen falls in both courts suggesting a sustained fall in cases reaching court. In the most recent quarter, we have seen an increase in both police station claims and a corresponding representation orders at the magistrates’ court halting this trend. The increase to extended sentencing powers at the magistrates’ court, since implementation in May 2022, has been feeding through to overall volumes with less committals for sentence arriving at the Crown Court and subsequently more work held at the lower court.

Civil legal aid volumes and expenditure show a varied picture compared to last year. Overall civil expenditure is returning to pre-pandemic levels driven by family law expenditure. Other non-family workload has not recovered to the same extent and this is driven by a slow recovery of housing work although in the last quarter this has increased. Overall civil legal aid workload still remains below pre-pandemic levels although trends are increasing in domestic violence, mental health and, within exceptional case funding, immigration.

It was expected that criminal and civil legal aid volumes would return to, and even temporarily exceed, historic trend levels and more recent falls could be due to this return to normal levels.

Pre-release

Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:

Ministry of Justice

Secretary of State for Justice, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Permanent Secretary, Head of Legal Aid Policy (2), Special Advisor Inbox, Legal Aid Policy Officials (3), Press Officers (4), Digital Officers (2), Private secretaries (5), Legal Aid Analysis (2)

Legal Aid Agency

Chief Executive, Chief Executive’s Office, Head of Financial Forecasting, Senior External Communications Manager, Director of Finance Business Partnering, Service Development Managers (2), Exceptional and Complex Cases Workflow Co-ordinator, Change Manager

In England and Wales, the number of deaths as a result of cocaine use has been increasing significantly over the last 25 years. In 1993, there were only eleven deaths due to cocaine use in England and Wales, by 2023 the number of deaths had risen 1,118. The UK has the highest share of users in Europe In 2019, the United Kingdom had the highest prevalence of cocaine users in Europe at 2.7 percent. This was followed by Spain and the Netherlands which both had around two percent of individuals using cocaine in this period. Age of cocaine users in the UK When broken down by age, the highest prevalence of cocaine users in England and Wales can be found in the youngest age groups. Almost over six percent of those aged 15 to 24 years used cocaine in 2018, and 4.6 percent in the above age group, 25 to 34 years, used in the same year. Additionally, since 2010 the share of school children who have taken cocaine in England has increased.

There were 2,784 infant deaths in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 2,620 in the previous year. The number of infant deaths in 2020 was the fewest in the provided time period, especially compared with 1900 when there were 163,470 infant deaths.