The Office for National Statistics ('ONS') has a requirement to procure Services related to COVID-19. ONS was commissioned in April 2020 to conduct the COVID-19 Infection Survey collecting the data which informs HMG's policies and operational interventions regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. CIS is a repeated cross-sectional household survey with additional serial sampling and longitudinal follow-up which provides an estimate of the proportion and number of people living in private households who would have had COVID-19 in the last week based on trend modelling. The study is led by DHSC and ONS and draws on the world-leading scientific expertise of the University of Oxford. CIS is the flagship surveillance study and the key source of COVID-19 infection data, incidence and antibody prevalence in UK communities. We work with key stakeholder partners; PHE, PHS, PHW, the Joint Biosecurity Centre, Ministers, SAGE, and the wider UK Test & Trace programmes to inform required policy and operational interventions.
The Authority requires a Prime Provider to supply and manage an integrated service for the CIS to households in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to be made up of the Services listed below:
• Supply and integration of Study Workers to conduct fieldwork and their management, including the provision of trained phlebotomists
• The provision of data and Management Information
• Contact Centre
• Courier, Logistics and Warehousing
• Future Requirements as Options within the Contract
• The Provider, across the service and integration, will play a pivotal role in delivering the established survey activities but will also be required to adapt and be flexible in the way these are delivered. The pace and scale of change is not predictable, given the unprecedented nature, and hence the data required to support the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Provider's ability and contributions will be fundamental to support this.
Supply and Integration of Study Workers to Conduct Fieldwork and their Management - Overview
The Authority has a requirement for the delivery of all operational aspects of UK fieldwork for The Authority's COVID-19 Infection Survey throughout the period June 2021-March 2023. This will include overall responsibility of integration of all services, provision of underlying data infrastructure and data flows.
This shall include full survey and fieldwork management, including preparation of training material, recruitment of Study Workers who support participant self-administration of swabs, recruitment of phlebotomists as Study Workers for the collection of venous blood samples and to support participant self-administration of swabs, training and management of the Study Workers, provision of appointment scheduling, supply chain management, venous blood and swab sample management system, end-to-end data flow management, quality assurance, collation of management information, managing and resolving complaints and incident resolution, information security and overall service integration. With the health and safety of participants and staff the highest priority, of particular note is that this includes a key role leading a 'health and safety first' culture across the field operation.
The fieldwork shall cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and be adaptive to survey sample requirements. The anticipated field force size will need to be able to deliver circa 130,000 unique tests per week, to include study workers and trained phlebotomists. The Field Force will follow NHS guidance regarding protective equipment. The study parameters are estimated, and these may change due to epidemiological requirements. All parameters and study design are subject to medical ethics approval.
The survey is a large-scale operation and success depends on the ability to successfully align data collection resources to meet the participant testing requirement, completing the data collection to a high standard and ensuring both a high-quality respondent experience and integrity in the data flows that occur. The study shall recruit on average approximately 35,000 participants per month throughout the period until March 2023. During this time, the number of active participants will typically be approximately 450,000, although the study will only be testing at peak effort approximately 130,000 a week. All participants shall be swab tested and up to 20 % of participants shall also receive blood tests for antibodies. The number of Study Worker visits shall therefore scale accordingly based on an average household size of approximately 2 participants.
Contact Centre - Overview
The fieldwork shall be supported by a participant Contact Centre to assist with registration, data collection, complaints handling, queries and potential assisted digital completion support. Service is required 7 days a week and operate the following hours:
• Monday-Thursday - 9am-9pm
• Friday - 9am-8pm
• Saturday-Sunday - 9am-5pm
The current level of resource is around 150 full-time equivalent staff. The service must be able to flex to meet study demands.
Courier, Logistics and warehousing - Overview
The Supplier shall provide a courier, logistics and warehousing service to support the fieldwork, to arrange distribution of equipment from warehousing to field staff, and movement of biological material from the Field Workers to around 100 UK-wide local collection points, to the selected UK testing centres (lighthouse labs currently at Glasgow, Milton Keynes and Oxford) within 24-48 hours of collection, warehousing and picking and packing service for interviewer kits (estimated at 4000-7000 parcels a week) which will include swabs, PPE, testing equipment and other survey materials for supply through the duration of the study. The estimated storage space per month is between 250 and 350 pallets.
Options - Overview
The Authority has two potential future requirements that it would like the Tenderers to consider *:
• For the provision of an online data capture platform in order to facilitate online participant registration, consent, assent and interviews, which will be expected to allow around 100,000 individual completions per week across the whole of the UK and be integrated into the operational model.
• For the replacement of venous blood draw with capillary (finger prick) blood draw.
* Note that these will not form part of the tender evaluation
Medical Protocol Dependencies
The CIS is a medical research study which takes biological samples from participants and therefore falls under the remit of the Human Tissue Act. As such, it operates under a strict medical ethics Protocol, which details exactly how the research must be conducted and requires formal approval from an NHS Research Ethics Committee and also a study Sponsor, Oxford University. Any change to supplier or design must be agreed in advance and then approved by the Research Ethics Committee. This must be carried out before conducting the change of supplier or process, in addition study participants must also be informed, in writing, of any changes to the protocol before participants may be contacted by the new suppliers.