This pandemic has been characterised by many things, one of which is the daily supply of statistics.

It seems that the appetite in some quarters for data around our battle against covid-19 and the race to vaccinate against it is insatiable.

Reliable anonymised health data is at the heart of tomorrow’s healthcare.

Data lets you personalise and fine-tune care, allowing clinicians to concentrate on what delivers the best outcomes for patients. Scotland has been gathering reliable medical records that can be joined up across a patient’s journey since the introduction of the Community Health Index number in the 1960s, a unique identifier for everyone born here or accessing the NHS in Scotland.

But data gathering needs to make sense – the people gathering health data and those who give their consent to theirs being recorded, need to see why the data is going to be helpful.

Then, when data is reported, it only has value for those looking for patterns and answers when it is complete and telling the whole story.

And the process of gathering that information needs to fit neatly into the existing processes around treating patients, not be an additional task.

In terms of the pandemic numbers, we are beginning to see even the Scottish government question whether more is always better, with the suggestion that the very process of gathering and collating some of the numbers might even be slowing down the very processes they are seeking to monitor.

Not enough numbers

Early every afternoon we receive an update from the Scottish government on the number of positive infections, the percentage that that number represents of all those tests that were carried out, the number of people in hospital in Scotland and how that equates to the day before. We are also told the total number of people being treated for covid-19 in intensive care units and the difference from the day before.

More recently, we have begun to get an update on the total number of people who have received the first dose of a covid vaccination by 08:30 that morning. And, in just a matter of weeks, we will no doubt start getting the number of people who have had their second dose.

At First Minister’s questions, Labour’s Deputy Leader asked for data to be published on the number of wasted vaccines.

The following day, Ed Humpherson, the Director-General for Regulation at the Office for Statistics Regulation, wrote to the heads of statistics across the four UK nations saying, while it was encouraging to see the statistics being made available on the vaccination programmes, the data needed to “evolve to more effectively monitor the vaccination programmes and help users assess whether governments are meeting the vaccination targets they set”.

Mr Humpherson called for additional information to be published on the age, gender and ethnic group of each person vaccinated; the number and percentage of vaccinations offered, administered or declined; where each vaccination occurred; and the number and percentage of people vaccinated in each of the groups set out by the vaccinations body JCVI.

When collecting numbers changes the numbers

In response to Labour’s Jackie Baillie, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she remained committed to publishing daily and weekly statistics. But she questioned the level of priority that gathering data should have.

“There is always a balance to be struck,” she said, “between tying people up in gathering data and reporting data, on the one hand, and actually doing the job they are there to do – to get vaccine into people’s arms, on the other hand.

“But we will be open and transparent about all that in as much detail as we possibly can.”

A day later, responding to a question about the Humpherson letter, Scotland’s National Clinical Director, Professor Jason Leitch, was not overwhelmingly enthusiastic about what he called the aspiration of the statistics regulator for “very detailed analysis” of the vaccination programme.

“The burden of data collection is a real thing though. It takes longer to vaccinate if you have to collect more data. It is just as straightforward as that.

“Some of the data we do collect, and we publish that weekly now with Public Health Scotland and the First Minister has given a commitment to look at the frequency of that publication and, if we can do it more often, we will. We now also published daily vaccination numbers.

“We will look to provide as much of that data as we can without slowing down the vaccination programme. Because, if you use a nurse to collect data, you may not be able to use that nurse to vaccinate.”

Solving equations

The death toll from covid-19 is shocking.

Whether it is a death within 28 days of a positive covid test, or a death where covid is on the death certificate as a cause or suspected cause (recorded by the National Records of Scotland), or an excess death compared with normal times – a death is a life ended by this virus.

These are numbers that should be reported and repeated in case we begin to think that this is normal.

However, one could argue that the other daily numbers, as presented, have less utility.

Is the total number of people in hospital a helpful number without knowing how many people were admitted and discharged?

Are we right to be relieved when the total number of people in intensive care reduces without knowing whether those people were discharged back to a ward or died – or how many people were admitted to ICU on the same day?

The figure for the number of new positive infections reported in the last 24-hour period has been important in showing the rapid transmission of the new variant of the virus. But, if you don’t also report this as a percentage of all people tested – as the BBC has taken to doing – then it’s difficult to see the trends properly.

Better numbers not new numbers?

Every government on the planet has struggled to deal with this pandemic. It has eclipsed everything while the logistical operation to vaccinate the entire population is of a scale and complexity unimaginable in peacetime.

Nobody can argue with the fundamental principle being adopted here of transparency.

However, there is a moral responsibility on politicians and journalists alike to adopt a grown-up approach to all the numbers that are being handed out – and to whether they should ask for more.

Will the reward for more granular data be more criticism and accusations of having failed to meet targets – even though the reason that, for instance, the number of people vaccinated has reduced is due to a snowstorm, a power cut or a van breaking down, rather than a failure of leadership?

As ministers look at each new request for more data in more detail, they will know that sharing more information creates more opportunities to be criticised. That, they will surely cope with. But they also have to consider whether they will tie up staff on the frontline in collecting that data who might have been better employed elsewhere.