The Coronavirus test and its tracking system were condemned as “barely working” today as the Tsar admitted that the order was up to four times the capacity, 90% of the tests failed to reach the 24-hour shift target.
The Guardian has seen documents showing that trackers take up to two weeks to contact friends, relatives and co-workers of people diagnosed with Covid-19 – for the duration of their self-isolation.
But amid growing anger and long queues at test centers, Dido Harding, head of the NHS’s £ 10 billion test and tracking program designed to prevent the second wave of Covid-19, He told the deputies Thursday: “I strongly reject the failure of the system.”
This came as Leeds sources said It is expected to be the latest city to face enhanced lockdown measuresThis brings the number of people under restrictions to more than 10 million, including nearly 2 million in the north-east of England. Official figures confirmed a 75% increase in positive weekly cases across England last week.
Only 1.9% of people using a home test kit in England got their results within 24 hours of the week through September 9, according to official figures – the lowest percentage since the test and tracking was launched in May. Results changed from 33.3% of personality tests within 24 hours, down from 66.5% the week before, causing indirect contacts delays required to self-isolate.
Harding, who also heads the newly created National Institute for the health “We have made a conscious decision due to the significant increase in demand to extend the response time in order to address the number of tests in the past two weeks,” protection told members of parliament.
timetable
What did the government say in the test
Boris Johnson
“Not only is the epidemic under control, with fewer deaths and hospitalizations, but we will continue to address it, through local closures and a super-test and tracking system.”
Boris Johnson
“The NHS Test and Trace does a heroic feat, and today most people get a test result in person within 24 hours, and the average flight is less than 10 miles if someone has to take a trip to get one … [To Keir Starmer] We make the tough calls – all he does is sit on the sidelines and carp. “
Boris Johnson
[On the ‘moonshot’ proposal for mass, near-instant testing:] “Hopefully this approach will spread widely by spring, and if everything comes together, it may be possible even for challenging sectors like theaters that life will be closer to normal before Christmas.”
Boris Johnson
“We don’t have enough testing capacity now because, in a perfect world, I want to test every person who wants to test right away … Yes, there’s a long way to go, and we’ll work day and night to make sure we go there.”
Matt Hancock
“Of course there is a challenge in testing … We have sent the exams to all schools to make sure the exams are available. But of course I also recognize the challenges in taking the exams … The tests are available, although getting them is a challenge.”
It admitted that the demand for coronavirus tests across the UK was three to four times higher than the total daily capacity of 240,000 – 82,000 in the NHS and Public Health England and 160,000 in the community.
This means that requests for tests can reach nearly a million people a day, based on estimates that include the number of people calling the 119 visitors to the government website, although “there will be some double counting in that.” Harding’s promised numbers will now be published daily.
She said surveys outside of testing centers found that 27% of people who attended did not have at least one symptom of the Coronavirus as prescribed.
Asked by Greg Clark, chair of Parliament’s science and technology committee, whether she was saying 27% were lying, she said that those who arrived on foot at a local center without an appointment had not made such a claim. “I fully understand why people are so anxious and afraid,” she added.
The Guardian was told that in a number of cases, contact trackers working for one company hired by the government to ensure that close contacts of confirmed Covid cases were tracked and informed of self-isolation, contacted only the contacts to find out that they were the first. Identified as at risk 14 days ago.
One contact tracker said: “Some people are told via testing and tracking that they need to self-isolate when their isolation period ends and you go. I called someone a few days ago to tell him he was in contact with a confirmed case and therefore needs to isolate himself. But in the middle of the call I realized that Her self-isolation period began on August 31. The test and tracking records relating to the contacts seem to confirm the claims of the trackers.
Professor John Ashton, the former Regional Director of Public Health in northwest England, said the system had performed so poorly that it could lead to legal claims against the authorities. And he warned that after seven or 14 days of self-isolating, “the horse took off – they’ve already deployed.”
“If people get sick and die, and it spreads to people that it shouldn’t affect them because we should have been on top of it, then we’re looking at gross negligence.”
In another blow, it is alleged that part of the software system that a contact tracing company uses when dealing with well-known carriers’ contacts has been disrupted this week, limiting the amount of work it can do.
The company required some contact tracing tools to update their computer screens every five minutes just because they couldn’t handle regular use, the documents indicate. Trackers said that some contacts became very angry due to the length of time that the dropped call took.
The Ministry of Health was contacted for comment.
One confirmed Covid-19 woman provided four contacts to the national contact tracing system, but said that after nine days of testing positive, three of them had not been contacted. Which has her husband who lives with her.
“It’s a mess,” said Rosie Allan, who was spending the weekend at a Somerset hotel with her friends, and they all tested positive later. “It’d be so much better if people reached out to their contacts themselves. It’s clearly not hitting the world.”
She said a call center called her two days after her positive test and it took about 40 minutes to collect the details of four people. He took one of them’s phone number, and agreed to the names and addresses for the rest.
18,371 people tested positive for the virus between 3 and 9 September, the highest weekly number since then Test and trace It was launched at the end of May. Last Evolution report It showed 14% of tests gave a result in less than 24 hours in the week through September 9, down from 32% the week before.
Jenelle de Grocci, president of the Association of Public Health Managers, said Thursday that her colleagues across the country reported “slow or insufficient” contact tracing. “We all want and need it for rapid improvement,” she said in a call for urgent funding for local public health responders.
“The situation is simply not sustainable. We cannot keep our communities equally safe. The emergency financing package for local outbreak prevention and management is urgent now – we need more people in our places and money in our councils to get the work done.”
In a debate in the House of Commons about new restrictions imposed on the nearly two million people in the Northeast of England due to the high number of infections, Jonathan Ashworth, the health minister in the shadows, criticized Matt Hancock for not being widely available.
Hancock recalled that in May he assured lawmakers that the vast expansion in the ability to test anyone five years of age or older meant that “we now have a“ test for everyone. ”“ Four months later, for the British people, it hasn’t become much of a test, ”Ashworth added. Test and traceability, such as traceability.
