Evaluating COVID-19 cases reported across prisons in England from 2020 to 2023: Is enhanced address matching a game-changer for surveillance?

Abstract

Objectives: Gathering real-time surveillance data on infectious diseases in prisons can be challenging, and can contribute to health inequalities, including poorer health outcomes and increased risk of transmission. This study assessed the reliability of the address-matching method developed by the UK Security Health Agency (UKHSA) in detecting COVID-19 cases in prisons across England.

Study design: Retrospective descriptive study.

Methods: The retrospective descriptive study compared data from the UKHSA prison line list generated using the enhanced address-matching enrichment procedure with pseudonymized line list data from the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) in selected English prisons between March 2020 and January 2023. Cases were compared at the regional and prison levels to examine the consistency of positive episode counts over time, and by prison. The study included 104 prisons and excluded young offenders' institutions.

Results: Overall, the comparison showed both MOJ and UKHSA COVID-19 prison episodes were very closely aligned in 2020 and 2021 with generally over ninety percent agreement in most prisons, the close alignment remained consistent overall and at regional levels until January 2022, coinciding with the arrival of the Omicron variant and shortly thereafter the relaxation in testing aligning with the governments living with COVID-19 plan when differences in case counts became more noticeable.

Conclusion: The enhanced address matching method is reliable in identifying COVID-19 prison episodes and could be adapted for active and timely surveillance of other infectious diseases, and in other settings beyond prisons. This can facilitate better and evidence-based policies for planning and intervention during public health outbreaks.

Keywords: COVID-19; Epidemiology; Infectious disease outbreaks; Prisons; SARS-CoV-2 infection; Surveillance.