OFFICIALS WAITED WEEKS FOR VIRUS RESULTS

Test and trace ‘not ready and working today’

LOCAL health officials waited weeks to receive the results of coronavirus tests, it has emerged.

And they currently don’t have the up-to-date information they would need to identify outbreaks of the Covid-19 virus and introduce local lockdowns – a key part of the Government’s test and trace strategy.

Alice Wiseman, Gateshead’s director of public health, told ChroniceLive: “We definitely don’t have enough information to be able to do that at the moment”.

She revealed that there had been a long delay in providing the results of coronavirus tests overseen by Deloitte, the private firm employed by the Government to manage a national testing regime.

In Gateshead, tests were carried out in the car park of the town’s Ikea.

While the Ikea testing site opened on April 9, it was only two weeks ago that results were provided to the local council, which is responsible for public health, and to regional officials at Public Health England.

And the only information provided was the number of positive results.

It meant officials do not know how many people were tested, where those who tested positive live or where they work.

It’s a stark contrast with a second testing system overseen by local councils across the country.

In Gateshead, tests conducted as part of the local scheme were sent to labs at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which provided results within 24 hours.

While more information from the national testing system is now being made available, results still take around four days to arrive, according to Ms Wiseman, making them of limited use.

She said the council initially targeted tests at people at the most risk, including those in care homes, healthcare workers and social care staff.

“We got really good data back from them so we knew who was tested, who was tested positive, where they were – everything we needed to know.

“All the diseases were notified to the health protection team at Public Health England and back to their GP, which was great.

“With regard to the national testing system, which was at Ikea, we didn’t get any information from those places until about two weeks ago, when we finally got just the headline data of the number of positive Covid tests.

“But no detail about who they were, where they were from, who they were employed by.

“At the moment we don’t routinely, on a regular basis, get all of that data from the national testing system. Public Health England has started getting it and collating it for the whole area, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the situation in specific parts of Gateshead.”

Results from tests conducted as part of the local scheme are usually returned “within 24 hours, or often a lot faster,” she said, while results from the national testing system take much longer.

She said: “We are waiting for four days to get the results back. So it doesn’t do anything.”

By the time somebody’s got the result they may have already passed on the virus to others, she said.

She added: “We desperately need the testing time to be under 24 hours.”

The Government’s test and trace strategy has a key role for local councils, who are expected to impose local lockdowns on areas with outbreaks of coronavirus.

Ms Wiseman said councils working with Public Health England were capable of carrying out this role – although they did not currently have legal powers to enforce lockdowns – and already did something similar when there were outbreaks of measles or E.coli.

But she said the council needed far more detail about test results, including details of where people tested live.

She said Government’s plans “sound quite good but in the future. It’s definitely not ready and working today”.