Viral respiratory diseases (including influenza and COVID-19) in Scotland surveillance report

About this release

Public Health Scotland (PHS) continue to consider timely ways to provide the public with official statistics. Between April and October 2025, Public Health Scotland (PHS) will update the narrative report once a month. The narrative report will be produced on 15 May 2025, 12 June 2025, 10 July 2025, 7 August 2025, 4 September 2025 and 2 October 2025. Full weekly narrative reporting will return on 9 October 2025. This approach aligns to the pre-pandemic one for respiratory pathogens, which typically follow a seasonal pattern. However, the interactive dashboard updates will remain a weekly publication. PHS will continue to monitor COVID-19 and other respiratory infection levels and reinstate the weekly narrative report before October 2025 if necessary.

Main points

Overall assessment 14 April 2025 to 11 May 2025 (ISO week 16 – week 19):

• Syndromic indicators for respiratory infections in the community and in GP practices are all at baseline.
• Influenza, COVID-19 and RSV: Overall laboratory-confirmed influenza cases are at baseline activity level and similarly in the CARI community surveillance system, test positivity for influenza A and B has decreased to below 5%. RSV signals remain at baseline activity levels across all surveillance systems. COVID-19 signals remain low and consistent across all surveillance systems other than hospital admissions, where admissions due to COVID-19 have started to increase from 41 in week 16 to 54 in week 19 (a 31% increase). The highest proportion of total hospital admissions were still accounted for by influenza.
• Other pathogens: Signals of higher circulating levels of HMPV and parainfluenza have been observed over the last month. For HMPV, although there has been little change in test positivity in CARI between the current 4-week period (11.1%) and previous 4 weeks, test positivity has been elevated for a number of weeks. From laboratory-confirmed surveillance, HMPV activity levels rose to moderate level last week (week 18) but returned to low levels this week. Parainfluenza test positivity increased in CARI to 7.2% (from 3.9%). There is a slight increased signal in laboratory-confirmed cases, albeit still at low activity level.
• All-cause excess mortality for week 16 (the latest week not impacted by reporting delays) remained at baseline overall and across age groups.
• The RSV vaccination programme for older adults and pregnant women in Scotland commenced in August 2024. From 1 August to 11 May 2025, 203,997 older adults received an RSV vaccine with uptake of 70.6%, and 16,449 pregnant women who turned 28 weeks from 1 August 2024 received an RSV vaccine with uptake of 6% over the entirety of the programme.
• As of the 11 May 2025, vaccine uptake for the spring 2025 COVID-19 vaccination programme was 75.5% for older care home residents, 37.4% among adults aged 75 years and older, and 16.9% in individuals with a weakened immune system.

Further information

The next update of the interactive dashboard will be 22 May 2025.

The next narrative report will be published on 12 June 2025.

Find out more

Previous Publications

Versions of the Weekly national respiratory report publication released before 30 November 2022 may be found on the Public Health Scotland website.

Versions of the COVID-19 weekly statistical report publication released before 30 November 2022 may be found on the Public Health Scotland website.

Open data

Open data from this publication is available from the following weblinks:

• Viral respiratory diseases Open Data platform
• Flu and COVID vaccination uptake Open Data platform

Further data

• The COVID-19 Vaccine Wastage datafile was updated on 18 April 2024 to include the most recent information.
• The COVID-19 in Adult Care Homes in Scotland datafile was updated on 27 July 2023 to include more recent information.
• 28 September 2022 COVID-19 statistical report publication contains information on COVID-19 infection and vaccination in pregnancy in Scotland.
• 2 March 2022 COVID-19 statistical report publication contains information on Highest Risk (shielding patients list)
• 7 November 2023 Community Acute Respiratory Infection (CARI) surveillance in primary care contains information on flu Vaccine effectiveness in community settings.
• 25 May 2023 Interim 2022/23 influenza vaccine effectiveness: six European studies, October 2022 to January 2023, contains information on flu Vaccine effectiveness in hospital settings.
• 13 January 2024 Estimated number of lives directly saved by COVID-19 vaccination programs in the WHO European Region, December 2020 to March 2023, contains information on lives saved due to COVID-19 vaccination