Test and trace may result in additional self-isolation spells
THE new test and trace service means people may have to selfisolate more than once, the Health Secretary has admitted.
And some workers will have to take 14 days off again and again.
Matt Hancock said anyone who is contacted by an NHS tracer must put themselves in quarantine, including himself – even though he tested positive for coronavirus in the past.
Unable
He said: “It is very frustrating but the reason for that is we don’t yet know whether people like me who have had it still transmit it if they come into contact with it a second time.”
Employers will need to “work constructively with their staff” who may be unable to work during such periods, he added.
“We changed the law a couple of months ago so that if you are instructed by the NHS for public health reasons to stay at home, then that is the equivalent in employment law to being ill.”
But trade unions warned that not all workers will be able to access statutory sick pay and some may be forced to stay in their jobs. TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said:
“That will put them, their workmates and their local community at risk, and undermine the entire test and trace programme.”
Under the system, launched yesterday, anyone who tests positive for coronavirus is asked to provide details of people they have been in close contact with. Those people will then be
contacted and instructed to selfisolate for 14 days.
But the operation got off to a shaky start, with some of the 25,000 contact tracers reporting IT problems.
One told Sky News “some haven’t even got their basic systems up and running” and they’d been told they would not start making phone calls until next week.
A former junior doctor recruited as a contact tracer told BBC Radio 4: “They haven’t given the final log-on information to enable me to get on to the system.”
The Department of Health said: “The system has not crashed. As with all large-scale operations of this kind, some staff did initially encounter issues logging on to their systems and these are rapidly being resolved.”