- Failures in England’s Test and Trace system are partly responsible for a surge in the Indian variant in one of the worst affected parts of the country.
- For three weeks in April and May, eight local authorities in England did not have access to the full data on positive tests in their area.
- The number of missing cases was highest in Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire.
- A recent surge in infections there has been linked to the Indian variant.
A recent news article published in the BBC by Sebastien Ash & Laura Kuenssberg states that Test and Trace failure helped Indian variant spread in England.
Track and Trace software issue
The government said a Track and Trace “software issue” had affected a “handful” of places, but this had been resolved “as quickly as possible”.
The other areas experiencing incomplete data were Blackpool, York, Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock.
£37bn has been set aside
NHS Test and Trace – for which £37bn has been set aside – identifies people who have been in close contact with someone who has caught Covid.
Between 21 April and 11 May, the system only provided details of a limited number of positive cases of coronavirus to the eight local authorities.
Department of Health and Social Care
On 11 May, they were told by the Department of Health and Social Care that, over that period, 734 positive tests had not been reported.
According to a report by officials at one of the councils affected, the central Test and Trace system failed to notify its staff of cases, meaning their contacts could not be traced locally.
It says that “the rapid spread of Indian variant cases… may be partially or largely attributable to risks in the international travel control system”, adding: “These were exacerbated by the sporadic failure of the national Test and Trace system.”
Six of the local authorities affected
Although it is thought that the people tested were given their results, local authority staff were not provided with contact-tracing information through the central system.
Labour called on ministers to “explain what’s gone wrong”.
First contact
Some 3,424 cases of the Indian variant – which is believed to spread more quickly than the Kent variant that caused the winter spike in infections – have now been identified in the UK.
The government added India to the “red list” of countries, from which travellers must quarantine in a hotel on return, on 23 April – two days after the problems with Test and Trace started.
While national contact-tracing teams should take on variant cases, identifying the particular variant can take up to two weeks.
In the meantime, local authority staff are often the first to make contacts with positive cases.
Where cases went unreported, they were also in many cases unable to offer support to isolating individuals.
