New analysis reveals that the Government’s flawed Test & Trace system failed to trace thousands of close contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in the East of England last week and that the percentage of potentially infectious people reached is going down.

 

The analysis, verified by the House of Commons Library, shows that 3,181people across the East were not reached by contact tracers, unable to handle the increase in Covid-19 cases as the country enters a second wave.

 

A contact is defined as someone who has come into close contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. Reaching 80% of close contacts is considered one of the key means of slowing transmission of Covid-19. Worrying across Cambridgeshire only 60.9% of contacts were reached last week

 

On 9th September, the Prime Minister announced ‘Operation Moonshot’, promising a Test and Trace system which would “allow people to lead more normal lives, without the need for social distancing.”  But in the four weeks since that statement the percentage of contacts reached in Cambridgeshire has gone down 17.0%.

 

Daniel Zeichner MP said:

“We didn’t need a world-beating system or a moot shot, just something functional . Sadly these figures show what we have feared for some time, that Test and Trace system on the verge of collapse.

 

“Tests are taking too long, leaving NHS and key workers vulnerable. And the abysmal contact tracing system has failed to reach a quarter of a million close contacts of people with the virus. The government is wasting hundreds of millions on a system that doesn’t seem to function or even use basic common sense.

 

“We’re are beyond the tipping point with the Test & Trace system. Without our local councils working day in day out to pick up the pieces, contact tracing would all have but collapsed.

 

“The Prime Minister must act now to reverse this trend. That is why I back Keir Starmer’s call for a short, sharp circuit break to fix testing, protect the NHS and save lives.”

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