COVID-19 EAVE-II study

Public Health Scotland (PHS) is collaborating with some Scottish Universities on the EAVE-II project to track respiratory infections, including Covid-19, in near real-time across Scotland, as part of our core functions in public health.

As part of this collaboration, we are looking at the impact of respiratory illness in the population and identifying risk factors that pre-dispose someone to infection.

We are also looking at how well treatments and vaccines work.

EAVE (Early Estimation of Vaccine and Anti-Viral Effectiveness) was a data reporting system originally created to support the 2009 swine flu pandemic response.

EAVE II (Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of COVID-19) is a repurposed and expanded version of EAVE, established in 2020 to support the Covid-19 pandemic response, and now adapted to monitor more respiratory infections.

Provide real-time monitoring of respiratory infections in Scotland. This will help to inform service provision and public health activities that will minimise the health and care burden resulting from infection.

Identify risk of infection to the whole population, groups of people, and different areas of the country. This will allow protective measures to be targeted to those people who are most vulnerable to infection.

Discover which treatments and public health measures are effective for preventing and treating respiratory infections, including vaccination where available.

EAVE-II collects electronic data of 5.4 million people living in Scotland. Any data that could identify an individual is removed. The remaining data is securely stored and only authorised analysts are able to use it.

This includes information on:

• medical conditions recorded in GP records, for example, high blood pressure or diabetes
• medical conditions recorded in out of hours consultations, such as suspected COVID-19 infection
• test results, including swab results, viral sequencing and antibody tests where available
• vaccination history (against COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses)
• prescriptions, such as antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medications
• attendance at accident and emergency
• hospital admissions
• deaths
• maternity and birth records

Find out more information about our collaborative work on Covid-19 vaccines.