Local councils to deploy Covid-hunters to ensure all kids can return to school in September
MORE local councils will deploy their own armies of Covid-hunters to ensure all kids can return to school next month.
They will support the failing NHS Test and Trace programme, which is operated nationally and relies on call centres.
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It is reaching fewer than half of potential virus contacts as people refuse to handover numbers or fail to pick up the phone.
Experts warn the UK faces a second wave twice as bad as the first if performance does not improve before classes resume.
Councils hope to track down more people by sending teams to knock doors.
They will also use local intelligence to engage with harder to reach communities and boost up-take of testing and quarantining.
Public Health England has already helped hotspots such as Leicester, Blackburn and Luton develop their tracing teams.
Now 94 other authorities have “expressed an interest” in following suit, with all councils set to be offered the same opportunity.
The plans were disclosed in a letter from PHE boss Duncan Selbie to all regional directors of public health sent last week.
It said: “We have been extending a model of locally supported contact tracing, developed initially with Leicester, and subsequently by Blackburn with Darwen and Luton, which brings local knowledge and insights to the challenge of case finding.
“We are supporting the work of Local Authorities on the Covid-19 watch list to develop this capability, along with a further 94 Local Authorities who have expressed an interest.
“In partnership with NHS Test and Trace, we will shortly be inviting all Local Authorities to take part in webinar events to determine if they also wish to develop a local service.”
Under the plans, national experts will be assigned a particular area to focus on and “uncompleted” cases passed to local tracers after 48 hours.
Blackburn with Darwen Council is among those to have already launched its own track and trace scheme to combat a rise in infections in the area.
‘NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE’
Its public health chief said the national system was “simply not tracing enough cases and contacts fast enough”.
Sir David King, a former Government Chief Scientific Advisor, has warned NHS Test and Trace is “not fit for purpose”.
He wants the Government to move to a localised system and ditch the firms running the call centres.
Sir David said: “With the current Test and Trace contract up for renewal in the next two weeks the Government has an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and move away from the current centralised system.
“It is clear from the figures being shared that this approach is simply not fit for purpose.
“The government must redirect these funds to support a localised system.”
Some 10,000 contact tracers have only spoken to an average of 2.4 people each.
Boris Johnson has claimed NHS Test and Trace is “world beating” and getting kids back to school is a “national priority”.
Labour today wrote to Heath Secretary Matt Hancock demanding urgent reform of the system.
The party wrote: “The stakes are too high to tolerate failure in either the operation or the design of this crucial public service.
“We cannot afford for the test and trace system to continue as it is without rapid reform.
“It is not too late to improve the system and put in place new, locally-led contact tracing measures.”
Cases linked to care homes, prisons and schools are already dealt with locally.
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Local teams manage to contact 98 per cent contacts compared with 56 per cent of those handled online or by call centres.
A Government spokesperson said: “NHS Test and Trace is working, and local action to tackle outbreaks and keep people safe is a crucial part of the national service.
“We are rolling out more dedicated ring-fenced teams of contact tracers, who are trained health professionals, to work intensively with health protection teams on a local area and are recruiting more people to work in local public health teams too.”
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