fecking useless and expensive.
Test and trace fails to contact 110,000 in English Covid hot spots | World news | The Guardian
The government’s £22bn test-and-trace system has failed to reach more than 100,000 people exposed to coronavirus in England’s worst-hit areas since the second wave began, official figures show, with four in 10 not asked to self-isolate.
A Guardian analysis found that the privately run arm of the test-and-trace programme had reached 58% of the close contacts of infected people in the country’s 20 worst-hit areas since 9 September, having barely improved since its launch.
Boris Johnson defended the value of the struggling system in a Downing Street briefing on Monday after it received a further £7bn in funding, taking its cost to £22bn this year. This amounts to nearly a fifth of the NHS budget and about the same as the Department for Transport’s.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, told MPs on Tuesday that test and trace “was functioning to reduce transmission enormously” and had “broken the chains of transmission hundreds of thousands of times” before England’s second national lockdown on 5 November.
However, official figures suggest its performance has waned as demand has increased. The proportion of close contacts being reached across England fell to its lowest level in October, to just over 60%.
In the areas with the highest infection rates, the private firms Serco and Sitel have reached 58% of exposed people since the start of the second wave, meaning the programme has barely improved on its 55% success rate in its first 11 weeks.
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said that 80% of an infected person’s close contacts must be contacted and told to self-isolate within 48 to 72 hours for the national programme to be effective.
Test and trace fails to contact 110,000 in English Covid hot spots | World news | The Guardian
The government’s £22bn test-and-trace system has failed to reach more than 100,000 people exposed to coronavirus in England’s worst-hit areas since the second wave began, official figures show, with four in 10 not asked to self-isolate.
A Guardian analysis found that the privately run arm of the test-and-trace programme had reached 58% of the close contacts of infected people in the country’s 20 worst-hit areas since 9 September, having barely improved since its launch.
Boris Johnson defended the value of the struggling system in a Downing Street briefing on Monday after it received a further £7bn in funding, taking its cost to £22bn this year. This amounts to nearly a fifth of the NHS budget and about the same as the Department for Transport’s.
The health secretary, Matt Hancock, told MPs on Tuesday that test and trace “was functioning to reduce transmission enormously” and had “broken the chains of transmission hundreds of thousands of times” before England’s second national lockdown on 5 November.
However, official figures suggest its performance has waned as demand has increased. The proportion of close contacts being reached across England fell to its lowest level in October, to just over 60%.
In the areas with the highest infection rates, the private firms Serco and Sitel have reached 58% of exposed people since the start of the second wave, meaning the programme has barely improved on its 55% success rate in its first 11 weeks.
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has said that 80% of an infected person’s close contacts must be contacted and told to self-isolate within 48 to 72 hours for the national programme to be effective.
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