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
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