A third of those who have tested positive for coronavirus in England have not provided details of people they have been close to and may have infected, data from the first full week of the new contact-tracing scheme has revealed.
Dido Harding, chair of the NHS Test and Trace service, said she was heartened by the public’s willingness to co-operate, but would need to do better.
Of the 8,117 positive cases referred to contact tracers, they had succeeded in reaching 5,407 who had been willing to give them names and phone numbers for the people they had met in the previous two days.
The tracers had reached 85% of those contacts – 26,985 people – and asked them to self isolate.
They failed to reach – or convince to stay home – a further 4,809.
But Lady Harding said the programme was in its very earliest stages and she accepted that there was much still to do.
“Tens of thousands of people have engaged with NHS test and trace in its first week either by taking a test if they’ve got symptoms or sharing their contacts if they test positive and then following the advice to self-isolate if they’ve been contacted. We clearly have got more to do to make sure that we reach everyone.
“We’ve got a lot more to do to improve the speed of the entire service,” she said, “but actually we have really significant testing capacity and the single biggest thing we can do to improve the process is actually encourage anyone with symptoms to get a test.”
There were many reasons why the contacts of a third of those who tested positive could not be tracked down, she said.
Sometimes the phone numbers and e-mails that contact tracers had been given were wrong.
Sometimes people did not answer their phones or e-mails and sometimes people refused to tell the contact tracers who they had been spending time with.
“Interestingly, some people said to us: well, I’ve already told my mates that I tested positive so I don’t need you to,” Harding said.
Prof John Newton, director of health improvement for Public Health England, who heads the testing and tracing programme, said they had to ensure they had the correct details for those people with a positive test.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock and head of NHS test and trace system, Dido Harding attending a remote press conference to update the nation on the pandemic inside 10 Downing Street in central London yesterday.
