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 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 7 July 2025 to 3 August 2025 (ISO week 28 to week 31):

• Syndromic indicators for respiratory infections in the community and in GP practices remain at baseline in weeks 28-31.
• COVID-19, influenza and RSV: COVID-19 has increased slightly across surveillance systems, with test positivity averaging 7.7% (compared to 6.8% in the previous 4-week period) via laboratory surveillance, and increasing slightly to 12% (from 10% in the previous period) via CARI surveillance. Influenza and RSV signals remain low across all surveillance systems.
• Other pathogens: Other respiratory pathogens remained at baseline activity levels in laboratory surveillance over the last month. Parainfluenza circulated at low activity in 2 of the 4 weeks, and in CARI surveillance test positivity decreased from 12.3% to 8.5%. No pathogens showed significant increases in the CARI surveillance system. All-cause excess mortality for week 28 (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. Between August 2024 to June 2025, 202,700 older adults received an RSV vaccine with uptake of 70.7%. From the August 2024 to May 2025,17,911 women who gave birth received an RSV vaccine, resulting in coverage of 49.1%.
• PHS reports results from a new study in Scotland showing that maternal RSV vaccination is 83% effective at preventing RSV-related respiratory hospitalisations in infants during their first three months of life, when administered at least 14 days before birth. Over the study period, from August to March, the RSV vaccine prevented 228 hospitalisations in infants aged ≤90 days, including those born prematurely.

Further information

The next update of the interactive dashboard will be 14 August 2025.

The next narrative report will be published on 4 September 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