England’s ‘World Beating’ System to Track Coronavirus Is Anything But

“Some call handlers, scattered in offices and homes far from the people they speak with, have mistakenly tried to send patients in England to testing sites across the sea in NI”
. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/europe/uk-contact-tracing-coronavirus.html

Amazing I am reading many of these details in an American newspaper.

“The system, staffed by thousands of poorly trained contract tracers was rushed out the gate before it was ready..leaving Public Health officials across England trying to battle a virus they still cannot locate

Not helped by the disconnect between Pillar 2 testing and GPs and local public health.

In Germany they built on their existing public health hiring more to work within the 375 local system.

Not these Jack-ass amateurs we have in our Government

Our incompetent Government entrusted the contract to Serco who have never done public health tracing before.

A company, I might add, that has been fined £1 million for one contract screw up then £19 million for its fraud re tagging of prisoners.

Other countries have grasped they need to prepare for years to come. This is unlikely to be the end of this pandemic. Nor the end of pandemics.

Apparently THE 1st PART of this contract was £108 million, undercutting any other possibility at just a 5% margin, without scrutiny

In the first weeks just 5,407 people who tested positive were contacted, missing 2710 others that HAD been transferred.

Let alone those that had not. I am still trying to establish whether this was an error or due to some exclusionary criteria.

If so, which? What criteria?

Contact tracers waited to be assigned cases. And waited. And waited.

One contact tracers said he was watching 3 films a day whilst being paid c $11 per hour. Just under £9 per hour. Not much more than minimum wage.

Meanwhile local PH were asked to plan for local shut downs

Of course without the prompt and detailed feedback on super fast testing and result to local PH and GPsa d absent and legal powers to do so that is likely to prove difficult.

Supposed to be ready by the End of June.

More political theatre and amateur incompetence.

I am sure there WAS some contract tracing going on early on. (I spoke to someone traced and tested negative). But there was no early and systematic expansion so when the pace of the virus hotted up there was no capacity. Not enough testing nor tracing.

We know Vallance’s leaked NSI June 2019 report recommended expanding diagnostics

We also hear that a key Committee was “mothballed” on Johnson becoming PM.

Did anyone request increased resources? If so when? Vallance? Whitty? PHE? DHSC?

Or did no one ask? If not why not?

I think we need to know whether it was refused & when & by whom or whether the culture of refusal is so embedded it felt pointless asking.

Meanwhile US tracers are paid about double the basic salary of the U.K. equivalent, many who were teenagers and in receipt of no training.

Higher paid contractors, eg a former nurse, said they were expecting to start work in June and instead got an email on 28 May & told to start work the next day.

The whole system crashed.

2 weeks later she has not spoken to a single contact.

Meanwhile other tracers say they have had no login details at all.

Now we know the exact start date (29/5/20) we can start working out how many positives there have been since - say - 27/5/20

We also need to know the time lag in the test results for all transferred and all not

Is the reason so many have not been transferred is because whoever makes the decision to transfer decided that the positive result was too old.

We need to know the numbers involved.

And the criteria.

The next thing is the policy and actions of the non responders.

These are probably the highest risk of all.

1/ Do they know they have tested positive (given now several reports of people who have not been tested getting negative results. How many more have gone astray?)

2/. Are they uncooperative? Is this because they are not self isolating for any reason (Why? Are they continuing to work fearing loss of wages or jobs) Either way VERY high risk. What is the policy? Is local PH and their GP informed? If not why not?

People who might be suspicious of contact from a stranger, understandably, would be much more likely to respond to a call from their local GP practise.

3/. Does the contact tracing service provide local resources (eg like the contact scouts they have in Germany to provide support and also ensure compliance)?

In Germany they work alongside the local PH tracing teams.

If they have been referring patients in England to NI test sites I strongly suspect that locality training and presence is very thin on the ground.