Hancock rejects tracing workload criticism
HEALTH Secretary Matt Hancock has defended the UK Government’s test and trace system, as thousands of young children in England returned to primary school.
Hancock said the contact tracing system was “up and running” and was “successful” following reports of problems with technology and staff saying they were being paid up to £27.75 per hour for doing nothing.
Asked during the daily briefing why some contact tracers have no work to do, Hancock said 25,000 had been hired and it was a good thing there were so many.
He said: “It’s successful, I’m very glad to report that those who are asked to isolate by the contact tracers are expressing the willingness to do so and we track that very carefully.
“The level of incidence of disease has come down and so actually we have more capacity than we need, this is a good thing.
“I think to err on the side of having too many contact tracers is the right side to err on. I’d rather have too many people trained and ready.”
One nurse working as a contact tracer said the necessary systems were “not in place”.
At the press briefing, Hancock pointed to a range of measures available to combat local flare-ups of coronavirus, which could include “shutting to new admissions a hospital A&E if there was an outbreak in that hospital”.
Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth called on Hancock to set out figures on contact tracing.
He said: “A successful functioning test, trace and isolate regime is vital for safe easing of lockdown. But the Health Secretary failed yet again to reveal the numbers of people actually tested nor could he tell us how many contacts have been traced so far despite boasting that the test and trace system was now ‘up and running’ and ‘successful’.”