A Profile of COVID-19 in Ireland - Using Census 2016 Household Data to Analyse COVID-19 Cases from March to November 2020

This new CSO Frontier Series Output, ‘A Profile of COVID-19 in Ireland - Using Census 2016 Household Data to Analyse COVID-19 Cases from March to November 2020’ is based on confirmed COVID-19 cases from the Computerised Infectious Disease Reporting (CIDR) data set provided to the CSO by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) and matched to individuals who were enumerated on Census Night 2016. The report focuses on economic, educational, health and other themes from the Census.

This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release. CSO Frontier Series may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. Publishing outputs under the Frontier Series allows the CSO to provide useful new information to users and get informed feedback on these new methods and outputs whilst at the same time making sure that that the limitations are well explained and understood. In using the increasingly varied sources of data available, the CSO must ensure that we continue to protect and secure data. Our aim is to ensure that citizens can live in an informed society while at the same time ensuring adherence to all relevant data protection legislation. In this report, of the 71,187 cases of confirmed COVID-19 in the CIDR dataset up to and including 25 November, 69% (49,169 cases) were successfully linked to the CSO’s pseudonymised Census of Population Analysis (COPA) 2016 data set. This report presents a statistical overview of the economic and social statistics of the linked 49,169 individuals only. As well as the strict legal protections set out in the Statistics Act, 1993*, and other existing regulations, we are committed to protecting individual privacy and all identifiable information from each of the data sources used in our analysis, such as name, date of birth and addresses, are removed before use and only anonymised statistical aggregates are produced. For further information on the data sources, linking procedures and limitations of this report, see Methodology.

The age and sex profile of COVID-19 confirmed cases included in this study are presented in Figure 1, with the profile of all COVID-19 confirmed cases from the HPSC's CIDR database on Novemeber 25th 2020 for comparison. 

The key findings of this report are:

• Irish Nationals accounted for 88% of confirmed cases
• More than two-thirds of cases were living in Family Units with children in April 2016
• More than 16% of cases declared they had a disability on Census night 2016
• The most popular fields of study taken by those affected by COVID-19 were nursing and caring (6%), business and administration (2%), accounting and taxation (2%)
• The industries that were most affected by COVID-19 were Health & Social Work (22%), Public Administration & Defence (14%) and Wholesale, Retail & Trade (11%)
• Nurses and Midwifes at 6% of cases was the most common occupation of COVID-19 cases despites only making up 2% of all employees in April 2016

This report is an example of the policy-relevant research projects the CSO are developing as part of its leadership role in the Irish Statistical System. Our goal is to maximise the variety and volume of data available to provide high quality information to the Government, businesses and citizens, through the development of a National Data Infrastructure (NDI).

The NDI plays an integral part in facilitating the CSO to develop new and improved statistical products for the benefit of citizens and policymakers. The core concept of the NDI involves the collection, maintenance and storage on all public sector data holdings, of the associated PPSN, Eircode and Unique Business Identifier (UBI) to be developed whenever they are relevant to Public Sector Body transactions with customers. This supports the development of targeted policy interventions.

Under the auspices of the Statistics Act 1993, and in compliance with all relevant data protection legislation, the CSO is in a unique position to gather and link administrative data sources held by Government departments and agencies and evaluate their potential for statistical use.

Note: Percentage of cases relating to disability amended on 13/01/2021.