Test and trace failing to help contain virus, warns report

SCOTLAND has the worst test and trace programme in the UK, with more than two-thirds of cases being missed, a damning report has revealed.

Only around 32 per cent of Covid-19 cases are being detected by tests, according to analysis of official figures by Gordon Brown’s think-tank.

It said the equivalent figure for England is 41 per cent, Wales 70 per cent and Northern Ireland 81 per cent.

This means people could be unknowingly spreading the virus to others because they have not been tested and do not know they are positive.

Our Scottish Future compared daily rates for positive coronavirus tests with the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) estimates of the total number of people who have the virus.

It concludes: ‘Comparing positive tests results to the infection rate estimated by the ONS surveillance survey implies that an average of 68 per cent of cases since November have not been identified through testing – meaning that the vast majority of cases have not been contact-traced. Scotland is the worst performer in the UK on this metric.’

Over a six-week period ending January 2, the ONS estimated a daily average of around 43,379 people in Scotland had Covid19, i ncluding asymptomatic cases, based on statistical modelling of population samples.

Over the same period, Scotl and’s testing programmes picked up a rolling average of 13,650 cases.

The report said this means 32 per cent of the total cases are being picked up. It said that the country’s contact tracing system is generating more contacts from each positive case than those in the rest of the UK but the low detection rate and slow turnaround time for lab tests means the whole system is having almost no effect on slowing down the virus.

Each interview in Scotland yielded an average of 4.1 contacts, compared with England’s figure of 2.4. But Our Scottish Future said the low detection rate meant the impact of Test and Protect on the R number – the rate at which the virus reproduces – is less than 5 per cent.

Its report says Scotland is ‘only using around a third of its total testing capacity, with participation depressed by low levels of convenience and poor messaging across two separate testing systems (NHS Scotland and UK Government)’.

It recommends more convenient testing through an increase in sites, and provision of athome lateral flow tests.

Bacteriologist Professor Hugh Pennington said: ‘It’s no wonder the virus is winning because, as this report shows, we are not seeking it out, and we are not finding it as often as we should do. Until we get testing and tracing right, then the virus will continue to spread.’

A spokesman for the UK Government said it is ‘providing Covid testing and test processing in support of NHS Scotland’, including ‘more than 30 test sites in local communities and around 20 mobile units’.

The spokesman said the UK Government’s test centres and Glasgow Lighthouse Lab were ‘operating efficiently’ and the UK Government ‘has provided a million lateral flow devices to the Scottish Government’.

A Scottish Government spokesman said :‘ These comparisons are entirely inaccurate, and baselessly undermine confidence in our testing programme.’

‘We are not seeking it out’