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Have your say: Has Test and Trace been a success?

NHS Test and Trace staff set up at the Liverpool Tennis Centre in Wavertree, ahead of the start of mass Covid-19 testing in Liverpool.
The government's Test and Trace system has come under fire from the National Audit Office (NAO). (PA)

The government’s Test and Trace system has come under fire after financial watchdogs found its call handlers spent just 1% of their time ‘actively working’.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said despite the £22billion budget thrown at the system for 2020-21, the low ‘utilisation rates’ - the proportion of time people actively worked during their paid hours - suggested they had little work to do.

It said not enough test results are delivered within 24 hours and too few contacts of infected people are being reached and told to self-isolate.

Its interim study found that while the government had “rapidly scaled up” the operation from a low base, at times “parts of the national tracing service have barely been used” and the situation needed to improve.

The Test and Trace system has drawn criticism previously, with figures last month suggesting it had reached its lowest ever proportion of contacts.

The report said: “In May, Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) signed contracts for the provision of 3,000 health professionals and 18,000 call handlers. The call handler contracts were worth up to £720 million.

“By 17 June, the utilisation rate (the proportion of time that someone actively worked during their paid hours) was low for both health professional (4%) and call handler staff (1%), indicating that they had little work to do.

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“DHSC had no flexibility to reduce the number of call handlers under the original contracts, which ran for three months.

“It negotiated new terms in August and reduced the number of these staff to 12,000, but utilisation rates remained well below a target of 50% throughout September and for much of October. This means substantial public resources have been spent on staff who provided minimal services in return.”

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NAO chief Gareth Davies said: “The Government has rapidly increased testing and tracing activity, building significant new infrastructure and capacity from scratch.

“However, it has struggled to test and trace as many people as it has capacity to, or to reach the contacts of people testing positive quickly enough.

“Test and Trace is core to the UK’s pandemic response.

“It must improve its performance with a focus on effective engagement with the public and integration with local efforts to improve tracing.”

Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), said the government had “tried to reinvent the wheel” by centralising Test and Trace, leaving local public health teams “out in the cold”.

She said: “Speed is of the essence but only two fifths of tests were turned around within 24 hours. And Test and Trace has only contacted two thirds of the people it knows were in close contact with someone who tested positive.

“The government needs to urgently work out what’s going wrong at every step of the process.

“Throwing more money at the problem clearly isn’t the answer.

“Testing capacity has risen and it’s easier to get a test locally but Test and Trace’s performance still isn’t good enough.”

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