August 10, 2020

expert reaction to the NHS Test and Trace service extending its partnership with Local Authorities

The government have announced that the NHS Test and Trace service will extend its partnership with Local Authorities.

Prof Keith Neal, Emeritus Professor in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham, said:

“The biggest issue has been that 20-25% of cases have not been contactable.  Allowing local authorities to chase up will ensure more are contacted.  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.

“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.  A centralised system can divert resources where they are needed more efficiently.

“Whoever makes contact needs to keep the local PHE team informed of the results. 

“The key step is that local Public Health England teams oversee this as local authorities are too small and in some places 3-4 authorities are within a few miles of each other.  The local authorities cannot continually be checking with each other about cross border issues which is where the local PHE teams are needed to co-ordinate. 

“At a local level who will be doing the contact tracing as environmental health offices are bases at the lower and unitary tiers, not the second level.  Many powers about closing businesses are at the first or unitary tiers.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-test-and-trace-service-to-strengthen-regional-contact-tracing

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.