The loss of liberty through Covid restrictions are so severe and harmful in themselves that they must be both necessary and readily understood by the public to have their consent and compliance. The management of the pandemic and the general restrictions are failing these tests.

Containment of identified cases & outbreaks is the key measure. If this were done successfully then the more general restrictions and lock downs would not be necessary. The Select Committee should urgently examine and improve this national program being run by NHS Test and Trace

People returning from high risk countries submit their contact details. They should at the very least be sent an email instructing them on how to quarantine. Many individuals receive no contact.

People who test positive and their direct contacts should be contacted with instruction on how to self isolate and followed up. In the great majority of cases they are not. Many people employed for contact tracing sit idle by their phones.

There is too much talk of number of tests, not enough of the follow up. Tests themselves achieve nothing. The political targets have driven an uncoordinated approach to test as many people as possible without a clear set of operating policies based on disease screening principles

The test and trace program has been an expensive failure to date despite heroic efforts from NHS labs and Public Health departments across the country to compensate for the poor procurement by NHS TAT and chaotic approach from Deloitte, Serco, and others

We must refocus on containment of outbreaks and successful, direct quarantine of infected and high risk cases rather than trying to manage this by ever more confusing general population restrictions based on extrapolations of incidence based on inaccurate population test results.