Isolation, Purification and Identification of SARS-COV-2

Dear Public Health England,

I request all records in the possession, custody or control of the Public Health England (PHE) describing the isolation of a SARS-COV-2 virus,
directly from a sample taken from a diseased patient, where the patient
sample was not first combined with any other source of genetic material
(i.e. monkey kidney cells aka vero cells; liver cancer cells).
Please note that I am using “isolation” in the every-day sense of the word:
the act of separating a thing(s) from everything else. I am not requesting
records where “isolation of SARS-COV-2” refers instead to:
• the culturing of something, or
• the performance of an amplification test (i.e. a PCR test), or
• the sequencing of something.
Please also note that my request is not limited to records that were
authored by the PHE or that pertain to work done by the PHE. My request
includes any sort of record, for example (but not limited to) any published
peer-reviewed study that the PHE has downloaded or printed.
If any records match the above description of requested records and are
currently available to the public elsewhere, please provide enough
information about each record so that I may identify and access each
record with certainty (i.e. title, author(s), date, journal, where the public
may access it).
Yours faithfully,

Trevor Allport

OFFICIAL
Dear Trevor Allport,

We acknowledge receipt of your email and request for information, which will be treated as a request for information under statutory access legislation.

Please note that requests under the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) will receive a response within 20 working days from the day following the date of receipt of your request.

If the request is for your personal data, your request has been handled as a data subject access request (SAR) under Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), then we will respond  within one month of the receipt of the request.

Public Health England (PHE) is responsible for providing guidance and advice to government and front-line services for all aspects of public health.  It is a designated Category 1 responder organisation under the Civil Contingency Act and this specifically includes the COVID-19 response, providing clinical expertise and wider public health advice and guidance across national and local government, the NHS and third sector.  As such, you may experience delays when making statutory information access requests during the pandemic.

We will aim to address all requests promptly and within the required response timeframes.  However when we are unable to meet the response timeframe we will keep requesters updated on a revised expected timescale for a response to their request. The Information Commissioner recognises this position in its recent guidance, see link: https://ico.org.uk/global/data-protectio…

Public Accountability Unit
Public Health England
[PHE request email]
Tel: 020 8327 6920 
www.gov.uk/phe   Follow us on Twitter