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davidgillonWoke up yesterday to find a big envelope through the letterbox from the Office of National Statistics, inviting me to be part of their national 'COVID-19 Infection Survey', and a message on my phone saying the same. Apparently I was selected for the honour because I recently finished doing their National Labourforce Survey, and because my name was pulled out of some sort of geographical address database - which I'd guess is being used to ensure they get complete coverage of the whole country. To register you had to call a number you were given in the letter.
The details are quite interesting. Oxford University are running it, and it'll start off with a visit from a health worker for a 15-30 minute Q&A with each person in the house (so just me), then a nasal swab for a COVID-19 test for all adults and kids over 2 - which you'll be shown how to do yourself, and in some cases a blood test, in which case the health worker will be a nurse. (It's not entirely clear from the documentation whether you would be explicitly told in the initial letter if they want to do the blood test, or if they'll decide that when you respond - it's a bit contradictory). Each person who does that initial session will get £50 for participating - with the Labourforce survey that was in the form of a gift certificate redeemable at a bunch of well known stores such as M&S. They also want you to volunteer for either four follow up visits a week apart, or those four, plus one a month for a year. And each follow up visit will entitle you to £25, which adds up to a reasonable chunk of money.
The plan is to cover 11,000 households initially, expanding to 132,000 over the next year.
It actually sounds like quite a well designed survey, though it's a bit farcical to see ONS putting this in place when the rest of the government is having so much difficulty getting sufficient testing capacity in place. But then things reverted to normal, or should that be SNAFU, with a panicked text to my phone (and presumably 11,000 more) saying "Our call centre is swamped, please, please select the option to have us call you back" (so I did).
