NOW TEST AND TRACE TEAM WILL KNOCK ON YOUR DOOR

As beleaguered NHS scheme axes a third of its call-handlers in radical shake-up...

BRITONS who fail to answer phone calls from the NHS test-and-trace service could now face a knock on the door.

In a dramatic bid to improve the beleaguered scheme, thousands of centralised call-handlers will be sacked – with much greater use made of local public health teams.

They will be sent to the homes of ‘close contacts’ of positive coronavirus cases who have failed to respond to repeated phone calls from test-and-trace staff.

The teams will initially target those in areas of high or rising rates of infections, with the new approach having been tested in Leicester, Luton and Blackburn. As

part of the shake-up, the Department of Health is planning to axe 6,000 callhandler posts – a third of the total.

The move follows concerns that many were spending their days watching Netflix. Several whistleblowers hired on £17-an-hour contracts claimed they had made hardly any calls since starting their jobs at the end of May and were being paid to knit or watch films.

It comes only a week after a major Lancet study suggested the test-and-trace service was not operating effectively enough to prevent a second coronavirus wave when schools reopen next month.

Last night, Department of Health officials insisted the changes were part of a ‘planned next step’ and nothing to do with the Lancet study or the growing criticism of the programme.

But the changes are likely to be seen as a tacit admission that the system – which ministers had claimed would be ‘worldbeating’ – was not working well enough ahead of a feared second wave.

Labour health spokesman Justin Madders said: ‘Labour has been calling for a locally-led contact tracing system for months – it’s welcome that local authorities are now finally being given additional support to tackle the virus in their areas.

‘But it’s clear Boris Johnson’s £10 billion centralised contact tracing system is nowhere near “world-beating” as he claims and the system is unable to fight local outbreaks successfully.’ Under the new plan, call-handlers who have been unable to get in touch with a ‘close contact’ – someone who has spent at least 15 minutes in the proximity of a patient with the virus – will be told to pass their details on to local health teams.

These teams will then decide whether to visit the contacts directly at home to tell them to self-isolate for 14 days.

The task of door- knocking all contacts who haven’t answered their phones will be time consuming, so the