Understanding and responding to COVID-19 in Wales: protocol for a privacy-protecting data platform for enhanced epidemiology and evaluation of interventions

INTRODUCTION: The emergence of the novel respiratory SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent COVID-19 pandemic have required rapid assimilation of population-level data to understand and control the spread of infection in the general and vulnerable populations.

Rapid analyses are needed to inform policy development and target interventions to at-risk groups to prevent serious health outcomes.

We aim to provide an accessible research platform to determine demographic, socioeconomic and clinical risk factors for infection, morbidity and mortality of COVID-19, to measure the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare utilisation and long-term health, and to enable the evaluation of natural experiments of policy interventions.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Two privacy-protecting population-level cohorts have been created and derived from multisourced demographic and healthcare data.

The C20 cohort consists of 3.2 million people in Wales on the 1 January 2020 with follow-up until 31 May 2020.

The complete cohort dataset will be updated monthly with some individual datasets available daily.

The C16 cohort consists of 3 million people in Wales on the 1 January 2016 with follow-up to 31 December 2019.

C16 is designed as a counterfactual cohort to provide contextual comparative population data on disease, health service utilisation and mortality.

Study outcomes will: (a) characterise the epidemiology of COVID-19, (b) assess socioeconomic and demographic influences on infection and outcomes, (c) measure the impact of COVID-19 on short -term and longer-term population outcomes and (d) undertake studies on the transmission and spatial spread of infection.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The Secure Anonymised Information Linkage-independent Information Governance Review Panel has approved this study.

The study findings will be presented to policy groups, public meetings, national and international conferences, and published in peer-reviewed journals.