Test and trace criticised for ‘wrong design’

As staff admit to sitting idle, an independent report suggests serious failings in the centralised system

TEST and trace staff are successfully reaching just one contact each a month, new analysis reveals.

A report by the Independent Sage group of scientists has criticised the new centralised system for its “fundamentally wrong design”, which it says sees thousands of operatives “sitting at home, many doing almost nothing for weeks on end”.

The group said that the army of up to 25,000 staff reached 51,524 close contacts of people who tested positive for coronavirus between the end of May and the end of July.

It amounts, on average, to two successful contacts each across the period.

With only 91,785 names of close contacts uploaded onto the system, each staff member would on average have been required to reach fewer than four people during the eight weeks.

The report comes as test and trace staff told The Telegraph the Government is “delusional” if it thinks the system is working, and that many of the phone numbers given by people who have tested positive for coronavirus appear to be fake.

One, who had worked with outsourcing company Sitel for around six weeks, said he had only been required to make one call and that that was “aborted”. For weeks, ministers have denied that the system is disconnected from the situation on the ground and that thousands of its newly-hired staff – most of whom have no healthcare background – are sitting idle.

As recently as last week, Boris Johnson repeated his claim that test and trace is a “world-beating” organisation.

However, yesterday the Department of Health and Social Care announced a radical change of tack, redeploying thousands to work with local authorities.

The move has been taken by some experts as a tacit admission that existing local NHS and council staff should always have taken the lead in fighting local outbreaks of Covid-19.

Independent Sage, led by a former government chief scientific adviser, Prof Sir David King, said in its report that local authorities had been “disempowered and sidelined”.

“GPS are also ignored, and volunteers, many clinically trained, remain largely unused,” the report states. “No person asked to isolate by this centralised system is followed up and workers not on PAYE are not offered financial support.”

The report cites Germany as an exemplar of a good test and trace because its local networks of GP practices, district hospitals and mayors have the knowledge and the autonomy to fashion their own responses to outbreaks in their areas.

Even before yesterday’s apparent U-turn, a number of English local authorities had signalled they would prefer to go their own way.

Last week, Blackburn with Darwen, the authority with the worst infection rate in England, announced it would launch its own contact-tracing scheme because the national system was not fast enough.

The criticism chimes with comments from staff employed by test and trace, which have emerged since its launch at the end of May.

One, a trained clinician, said the job was akin to being “paid to watch Netflix”.

Others spoke of being members of a Whatsapp group called the Mouse Movers Club, which they use to remind each other to move their computer mouse every 15 minutes to avoid being locked out of the system.

Last night a staff member told The Telegraph he wasn’t adequately prepared for the job.

“I was working at Tier 3 and you are not given any training to challenge what the person tells you,” he said.

“You are not collecting any information, you just tell them that they have been in contact with somebody who has tested positive and therefore you have to self-isolate.

“You don’t even know who they have been in contact with or where they had contact with that person. You literally get their name and phone number and maybe a date of birth.”

Another tracer revealed: “I’m week 15 now – still not a single call, and loads of overtime available pretty much every week now. I’m working 53 hours this week.”

One said the Government is “delusional” if they think test and trace is working, adding: “Ninety five per cent of the records I get don’t answer.”

On August 23 the Government will decide whether to extend the current contracts with the outsourcing firms Serco and Sitel – worth £108million up to a maximum of £410million.

Independent Sage last night argued the contracts should be cancelled and control handed over to local public health teams.

Prof Keith Neal, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Nottingham and not a member of Independent Sage, said: “The biggest issue has been that 20 to 25 per cent of cases have not been contactable.

“Allowing local authorities to chase up will ensure more are contacted,” he added. “Visiting houses will help but there is no mention as to what they will do if they are not isolating for 10 days as they should be.”

But he added: “The advantage of a national system is that it can divert resources to hotspots. In some places they are very few cases, others have many more so there is likely to be a capacity issue in some areas.”

‘I’m week 15 now – still not a single call, and loads of overtime available. I’m working 53 hours a week’