Covid - 19 Track & Trace

We all know what a shambles the scumbag 'nasty party' have made of their 'track & trace system and the constant criticisms that various people 'inside' have made of it. Now there is a scientist who knows the system from the 'inside' and has given an interview to the media seriously criticising the government's failures.



'Not even virus beating': Government scientific adviser dismisses Boris Johnson's claim test and trace system is world leading
Sir Keir Starmer also warns PM's 'repeated refusal to accept that test and trace isn't functioning properly is a roadblock to fixing the issues and restoring public confidence'

England’s coronavirus track and trace system is not “virus beating”, is failing to give epidemiologists the data they need and its “clunky” set up is resulting in people giving up processing vital information, a government scientific adviser has claimed.

The remarks from professor John Edmunds – a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) – come three months after Boris Johnson vowed to have a “world beating” system to track and isolate those who have contracted Covid-19 by 1 June.

Speaking on BBC Newsnight, professor Edmunds said: “This is the system that is supposed to be in place for us to east the restrictions – but we’ve been easing the restrictions over the last few weeks and cases are going up, so it’s clearly not taking the strain as we hoped it would do.”

Pressed on the prime minister’s claim to have a “world beating” system to tackle the transmission rate of the virus, he replied: “Honestly I couldn’t care less whether it’s world beating or not. I just want it to be virus beating – and it’s not.”

He added that the system is “quite clunky” and takes a considerable amount of time to get the information out of individuals about their contacts.


“They might give the initial information then start to get a bit sick of the whole process and give up,” he said. “I think that’s a problem – a problem for just collecting the data. They collect metrics about how well they are doing, the NHS test and trace, but as epidemiologists we kind of want other metrics to be measured and they are not really doing that at the moment.”

His frank assessment of the track and trace system follows a study published earlier this week, which claimed that with increased levels of testing and effective track, trace and isolate system in place “an epidemic rebound might be prevented”.

The study, published in the Lancet Child And Adolescent Health journal, analysed data from the first wave of the coronavirus and modelled the potential impact of schools across the country reopening next month in order to understand how the virus can be kept under control.

But they warned the government that reopening schools in September, alongside workplaces, without a scaled-up programme “could result in a second wave of infections between two and 2.3 times the size of the original wave”.

Writing in The Guardian, Sir Keir Starmer also urged the government to use the remainder of the summer to improve the track and system to avoid Britain facing “a long and bleak winter” with a spike in infections.

"On the occasions that the government has acted at pace, it has too often done so without a clear plan,” the Labour leader said. “Trying to get answers and clarity from the prime minister is a frustrating experience.

"His repeated refusal to accept that test and trace isn't functioning properly is a roadblock to fixing the issues and restoring public confidence."

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, professor Neil Ferguson, whose modelling of the coronavirus helped lead to the first government imposed lockdown, said there will have to be “some tightening up” of restrictions if opening schools next month raises the transmission rate.

While he said there was a lot of evidence that primary schools and young children pose little risk of transmission, he said: “I think the concern is with secondary schools, teenagers, further education colleges and universities where the evidence is still not certain, but it looks like older teenagers can transmit just as well as adults.

"The risk then is that big schools, comprehensives, universities, FE colleges, link lots of households together, reconnect the social network which social distancing measures have deliberately disconnected. And that poses a real risk of amplification of transmission, of case numbers going up quite sharply."

He added: "In terms of the reproduction value, the 'R' value, opening high schools could increase it by as much as a half, but by as little as 0.2 or 0.3, but it will go up.

"Given we're at 'R' equal to one at the moment, clearly we don't want 'R' going up to 1.5 or so, that would ... lead to quite rapid growth of the epidemic."

 

The Government hire a private company (SERCO) to deal with track & trace on their behalf. This company, which has been used by the Government in other projects and failed dismally, is now failing in the track & trace project too. The scumbag 'nasty party' Government, not only negligent and incompent but is a disgrace !!!


Serco boss defends lack of work completed by contact tracers

Rupert Soames, chief executive of Serco, which is among several firms that are recruiting, coaching and managing contact tracers, admitted that the Test and Trace system has “more capacity than we need” but said the Government “had to start somewhere”.

Mr Soames also admitted that 20% of contacts are untraceable as individuals who tested positive do not know them well enough to have their personal details.

His comments comes as an anonymous contact tracer said she is effectively being “paid to watch Netflix”.

NHS England’s Test and Trace system, which is being led by Baroness Dido Harding, relies on identifying people who have been in contact with a positive case and getting them to self-isolate.

But the programme, run by Serco and Sitel through a contract reported to be worth up to £108 million, has faced questions about performance and value for money.

Last month, health expert Professor Sir Chris Ham wrote an opinion piece in the British Medical Journal urging the Government to give local leaders control over the service.

Mr Soames told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the Test and Trace programme is “improving all of the time”.

“I think we need to get this into proportion. You’re giving me the numbers saying that we’re tracing 50% of contacts, let me tell you that 96% of the people that we talk to agree to self-isolate.

“So we’ve got a very, very high success rate of people that we get to contact,” he said.

Pushed on the fact that this is only the known contacts that tracers have been able to reach, Mr Soames added: “So there’s been 218,000 already contacted.”

Questioned again on why tracers are still only managing to get hold of half of people’s contacts, Mr Soames said: “If somebody rang you now and I said: ‘Tell me everybody that you have met, been in contact with, in the last 48 hours, and tell me on the telephone, give me their contact details’, how many do you think that you’d be able to reel off of the top of your head?

“And the fact is that about 20% of the contacts that people give us say: ‘I know I sat next to somebody on a bus on the way in but I don’t have their contact details. I’m sorry, but my brother-in-law brought around a friend last night, I don’t have their contact details.’

“So there is an element of that, and it is about 20% at the moment where people can’t remember or never knew the contact… the details of where they were.”

Asked why so many contact tracers are doing so little work, Mr Soames added: “Let me tell you we’ve got 10 Nightingale hospitals lying vacant, we’ve got 30,000 ventilators that are not being used.

“The Government has to start somewhere with capacity and the fact is that we’ve got too much capacity, or more capacity than we need right here, right now, today.

“But naturally the Government has taken a decision to over-provide to begin with on the basis that we can always reduce it.

“I mean we could increase the number of calls per agent by reducing the number of agents who are there and I am pretty sure that the Government, over the coming weeks, is going to start reducing the number that we have.”

A leaked email from Mr Soames in June disclosed that he wanted the system to “cement the position of the private sector” in the NHS supply chain.

In the email forwarded to staff, he said: “If it (the contact tracing system) succeeds… it will go a long way in cementing the position of the private-sector companies in the public-sector supply chain. Some of the naysayers recognise this, which is why they will take every opportunity to undermine us.”

He asked managers to ensure staffed behaved in a way to survive the “Daily Mail test… that you would not mind their behaviour being described on the front of a national newspaper”.