Ross Clark Ross Clark

The damning verdict on NHS Test and Trace

Head of NHS Test and Trace Dido Harding (Getty images)

SAGE has already poured cold water on the NHS Test and Trace system in England, suggesting in September that it was making only a ‘marginal’ difference to Covid infection rates. Now the National Audit Office (NAO) has had its say, publishing its interim report into whether it has been value-for-money. It is not much more flattering. 

It depicts a hugely-expensive system which leaves many of its staff sitting around with little to do and which is failing to make contact with nearly as many people as it needs to in order to work as SAGE says it needs to.

The budget for Test and Trace over the whole of 2020/21, it says, is £22 billion – quite a lot more than the £12 billion that is commonly quoted as the cost of the scheme. The majority of the cost – 85 per cent of that spent so far – is in the testing rather than the tracing: £5.9 billion has been spent on laboratories and machines, £2.9 billion on the tests and £1 billion on supplies and logistics.

SAGE says that in order to be effective 80 per cent of close contacts would need to be traced. Yet at the end of October, only 60 per cent of contacts were being successfully contacted. Worse, estimates for the number of people who were complying with the instruction to self-isolate, range between ten per cent and 59 per cent. 

The low contact rate is certainly not due to a shortage of contact-tracing staff. The system recruited 3,000 specialist health professionals and 18,000 call handlers, but at times they have had virtually nothing to do.

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