Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 16 July 2020
165. Deputy Joan Collins asked the Minister for Health if he will include north County Dublin, Limerick city and so on in the daily Covid-19 dashboard in which new cases are arising; and if he will also include the gender of the daily new cases. [16335/20]
Amharc ar fhreagraSince the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) met for the first time, a commitment was given to collect and publish as much relevant data as possible while ensuring individual patient confidentiality is maintained at all times. While the nature and scale of the Covid-19 pandemic has been unprecedented, the collection of timely and comprehensive data has underpinned the efforts of the public health response to Covid-19 and has been instrumental in developing the health service response to Covid-19 and to the advice provided by NPHET and the Department of Health to assist Government decision-making in the wider response to Covid-19 in Ireland.
As the Deputy is aware, comprehensive national statistics, information and data about Covid-19 in Ireland is published on a daily basis on the Covid-19 Data Hub and Dashboards including total cases by county and the gender profile of total cases. These figures are updated daily and are available at http://www.gov.ie/covid19dashboard/. The data available on the site is based on official figures provided by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) and the Health Service Executive (HSE). This site is built using the GeoHive platform, Ireland's Geospatial Data Hub.
It should be noted that due to the nature of the disease transmission and the clustered effects of the disease, many of the cases occur in relatively small communities where identification of individual patients could be an issue if appropriate measures are not taken to protect individual identities and their locations. The data published to date has been aggregated with this consideration in mind while also ensuring that data is made available in a timely and comprehensive manner to inform the Department and wider Government response but also to ensure the public are kept informed to the greatest extent possible.
The Deputy may wish to note that a range of other data is provided by the CSO including alternative information relating to electoral divisions. This is available on the CSO Covid-19 Information Hub at https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-covid19/covid-19informationhub/ and in particular at https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/br/b-cdc/covid-19deathsandcasesseries7/
There is also ongoing collaboration between my Department, the HPSC, HSE, the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, the CSO, Ordnance Survey Ireland and many other institutions and agencies to improve the data collected and the availability of it on an ongoing basis. I would like to assure the Deputy of my Department's ongoing commitment to publish as much Covid-19 data on an ongoing basis as is practicable, relevant and appropriate.
