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Found 25 results
  1. News Article
    A leading figure in the World Health Organisation Foundation has criticised the UK’s move to dismantle its Covid testing programme as the disease surges in other parts of the world. Mr Anil Soni, chief executive of the WHO Foundation, said in an interview with The Independent that maintaining surveillance over Covid-19 was “incredibly important” and the “dismantling of the testing infrastructure here strikes me as very worrying.” The WHO Foundation chief warned people were “looking the other way” from counties where there is low vaccine coverage to maintain the hope that Covid is over. He warned low vaccine coverage is a “petri dish” for future variants to breed and that the acute phase of the pandemic could not be over until this is addressed. When asked about the UK’s plans to end its NHS Test and Trace programme Mr Soni said: “I’m very concerned about it. “What we’ve seen is, it’s incredibly important to maintain surveillance, and countries in southern Africa should be applauded for detecting Omicron as quickly as they did. Those surveillance systems need to be in place around the world. “We also want to make sure that testing is widely available so that people, when they become infectious, can be aware of their status and keep others safe. For testing not to be available and for us to be moving too quickly to normalcy creates risk.” Mr Soni said the world’s position with Covid was “precarious” and highlighted the surge being seen in Hong Kong, where “health centres are at the verge of collapse, because of how many people are sick”. Read full story Source: The Independent, 10 March 2022
  2. News Article
    The NHS is warning about widespread scam text messages telling recipients they have been in close contact with a Covid case. "We've seen reports of fake NHS text messages about ordering Omicron Covid-19 test kits," it tweeted. Close contacts of people who have tested positive are no longer advised to test. The aim of the messages appears to be harvesting financial and personal information. In its alert, the NHS says it will "never ask for bank details, so please be aware of suspicious messages". Most people are no longer advised to test for Covid and are ineligible for free tests - but some some pharmacies and shops sell them. Read full story Source: BBC News, 22 June 2022
  3. News Article
    Public health leaders were slow to act on repeated warnings over Christmas 2020 that contact tracing and isolation should be triggered immediately after a positive lateral flow test result, leaked evidence to the Covid inquiry shows. A scathing “lessons learned” document written by Dr Achim Wolf, a senior test and trace official, and submitted to the inquiry, gives his account of a trail of missed opportunities to improve the NHS test-and-trace regime in the first winter and spring of the pandemic – before vaccines were available. It suggests that people will have unnecessarily spread the virus to friends and relatives in the first Christmas of the pandemic and subsequent January lockdown period because they were not legally required to isolate and have their contacts traced as soon as they got a positive lateral flow test. Instead, for around two months, those eligible for rapid testing were told to get a confirmatory PCR test after a positive lateral flow. About a third of those who subsequently got a negative PCR result were likely to have had Covid anyway. In the “lessons learned” document seen by the Guardian, Wolf says: “Over the winter months, the prevalence in individuals who had 1) a positive lateral flow; followed by 2) a negative PCR; may have been upwards of 30%. These individuals were then allowed to return to their high-risk workplaces.” The former head of policy at NHS test and trace highlights how it took too long to get clear advice from Public Health England about policy on contact tracing and isolation rules in the face of changing scientific evidence on the accuracy of lateral flows. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 30 November 2022
  4. News Article
    A leading health expert has suggested ministers have “lost control of the virus”, after the UK recorded it’s largest 24-hour spike in COVID-19 cases since 23 May. Government figures showed there have been a further 2,988 lab-confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK as of 9am on Sunday. This brings the total number of confirmed cases in the UK to 347,152. Sunday's figure is the highest since May 22 when 3,287 cases were recorded, and is also the first 24-hour period when cases passed 2,000 since the end of May. The tally was an increase on Saturday's figures of 1,813 new cases. Prof Gabriel Scally, a member of the Independent Sage group and a former NHS regional director of public health for the south-west, warned that government ministers had “lost control of the virus”. “It’s no longer small outbreaks they can stamp on,” he told The Guardian. “It’s become endemic in our poorest communities and this is the result. Shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth called upon the government to respond to the sharp spike. He added that it was “a stark reminder that there is no room for complacency in tackling the spread of the virus”. “This increase, combined with the ongoing testing fiasco where ill people are told to drive for miles for tests, and the poor performance of the contact tracing system, needs an explanation from ministers,” he said on Sunday. Read full story Source: The Independent, 7 September 2020
  5. News Article
    England’s test-and-trace system has been hit with fresh problems after there were delays in contacting nearly 2,000 people infected with coronavirus, and one in seven home tests failed to produce a result. An internet outage meant nearly 3,000 more people than usual were transferred to the contact-tracing system after testing positive for COVID-19 in the week ending 19 August. Two-thirds of these people had been tested days or weeks earlier, meaning there was a delay in reaching them and their close contacts when they should have been self-isolating. The proportion of home tests kits failing to produce a result that week rose sharply, from 4% to 15% of the total, equating to more than 18,000 tests. The Department of Health and Social Care figures also show that test and trace failed for a ninth week running to reach its target of contacting 80% of close contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, acknowledged on Thursday that the programme was “not quite there” in reaching that target. He told LBC radio: “One of the challenges is we want to get NHS test and trace up to over 80% of contacts, getting them to self-isolate – we’re at just over 75%, so we’re nearly there but not quite there.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 27 August 2020
  6. News Article
    The new version of the government’s contact tracing app will give users a ‘risk score’ based on how many people they interact with and where they live. The news comes as the Department of Health and Social Care launches a trial for the latest model of the contact tracing app, two months after the initial version was scrapped. According to the DHSC, the new app will tell users whether their risk of contracting coronavirus is unknown, low or high based on how many people they are in significant contact with. They will also be told what the coronavirus risk level is in their local authority area and will be alerted if it changes. Government guidance said the risk levels and alerts will be based on a local authority watchlist – which highlights areas that are of particular concern across the country, based on the number of coronavirus cases. People will also be able to check into venues – such as restaurants, pubs and leisure centres – using the app by scanning a QR code. If there is then an outbreak in a venue those who have checked in via the app will be alerted and told to isolate. The new NHS Test and Trace app trial was launched today for residents on the Isle of Wight and will expand to the London borough of Newham next week. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 August 2020
  7. News Article
    The UK’s failure to report how many people have recovered from COVID-19 has been criticised by public health experts, who say a huge proportion of cases have remained “invisible” to the health service. Britain is an outlier internationally in not reporting the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 alongside statistics on deaths and numbers of identified cases. Chile is the only other nation not to share this information out of the 25 countries with the highest reported incidence. A failure to monitor those who test positive for COVID-19 outside of hospital has left people feeling unsupported and alienated from the health system, the experts say. There is concern that because the majority of community cases have not been logged in patient records, it will be more challenging to research the long-term consequences of the disease. Prof Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Not tracking people in the community, for me, [is] so astonishing. These people are completely invisible in the health system.” Read full story Source: The Guardian, 18 June 2020
  8. News Article
    In a major U-turn, the UK is ditching the way its current coronavirus-tracing app works and shifting to a model based on technology provided by Apple and Google. The Apple-Google design has been promoted as being more privacy-focused. However, it means epidemiologists will have access to less data. The government now intends to launch an app in the autumn, but it says the product may not involve contact tracing at that point. Instead the software may be limited to enabling users to report their symptoms and order a test. Baroness Dido Harding - who heads up the wider Test and Trace programme - will only give the green light to actually deploying the Apple-Google technology if she judges it to be fit for purpose, which she does not believe is the case at present. It is possible this may never happen. Read full story Source: BBC News, 18 June 2020
  9. News Article
    The NHS contact-tracing app will not be ready before winter, a health minister has said, despite initially being promised in mid-May. Lord Bethell said the Department of Health was "seeking to get something going for the winter". But, he told a committee of MPs, the app wasn't "the priority at the moment". Lord Bethell confirmed the government still planned to introduce a contact-tracing app, describing it as "a really important option for the future". The app has been the subject of a trial on the Isle of Wight, where the Department of Health says it has been downloaded by 54,000 people. Lord Bethell said the trial had been a success, but admitted that one of its principal lessons had been that greater emphasis needed to be placed on manual contact tracing. Asked why the app had taken so long to release, Lord Bethell told the Science and Technology Committee the Isle of Wight trial had shown that people "weren't frightened of it, as we were worried that they might be" - and had also provided "concrete examples" of successes in breaking transmission chains. But he admitted there had been "technical challenges", as well as an "ongoing battle" to persuade people the system was safe and privacy-protecting. Read full story Source: Sky News, 18 June 2020
  10. News Article
    A contact tracing system has this week been launched in Wales, initially a telephone based process, followed by an online system next week. Anyone who has a positive coronavirus test result will be contacted by a team of contact tracers and asked for details of everyone they have had close contact with while they have had symptoms. From Monday 8th June, a new online system will be used to support the process. People will have the option to use the system to provide details of their close contacts electronically. The system has been trialled in four health board areas over the last two weeks and more than 600 contact tracers have so far been employed, with more to be employed. Health Minister, Vaughan Gething said “Today’s roll-out of the contact tracing element of our Test, Trace, Protect strategy is a significant step forward in the gradual move out of lockdown.” Read full story Source: HTN, 2 June 2020
  11. News Article
    The UK's scientists have been trying to trace COVID-19's path through the population ever since the coronavirus arrived on British shores. In what is thought to be the largest study of its kind in the world, an app developed by King's College London (KCL) and technology company Zoe, which tracks symptoms of the disease, has been downloaded more than three million times in the UK. Not to be confused with the government's contact-tracing app, the COVID-19 Symptom Study app allows users to report daily whether they feel healthy, and record any symptoms. The scientists have been using the data to estimate how the virus may have travelled through the population. Read full story Source: BBC News, 23 May 2020
  12. News Article
    Time is running out to finalise a track and trace strategy that would avoid a potential second surge in coronavirus cases, NHS leaders have said. The NHS Confederation warned of "severe" consequences to staff and patients if the right system was not established quickly and that lockdown measures should not be eased until a clear plan was in place. Contact tracing identifies those who may have come into contact with an infected person, either through an app or by phone and email, so they can avoid potentially passing the disease on. It follows the Prime Minister's pledge to introduce a "world-beating" contact tracing system in England from June. Niall Dickson, chief executive of the confederation, which represents health and care leaders, welcomed Boris Johnson's pledge made at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday. But in a letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Mr Dickson said without a clear strategy the UK was at greater risk of a second peak of the virus. He said a strategy should have been in place sooner and if the right system was not instigated rapidly the ramifications for the NHS "could be severe". Speaking on the Today programme, Mr Dickson said: "We are absolutely clear that contact tracing is the right thing to do, it is absolutely critical, it has got to be in place to prevent any notion of a second surge if the lockdown is being further released." Read full story Source: 21 May 2020
  13. News Article
    Local authorities must be at the heart of contact tracing because COVID-19 is best understood as a pattern of local outbreaks rather than a national pandemic, says Sir Chris Ham and Robin Tuddenham in an HSJ article. Community testing and contact tracing represent our greatest hope for managing the risks to health of COVID-19 until a vaccine and effective treatments become available. Experts in infectious disease base their understanding of this on previous pandemics, and the experience of countries like South Korea and Germany. Work is underway at pace to resume contact tracking and tracing in England. It is understood that this programme will begin in earnest from 18 May following a pilot on the Isle of Wight. This work is a core part of Matt Hancock’s five-point plan for combating COVID-19, in support of some relaxation of lockdown anticipated soon. Whilst the pace is understandable, the methods and approach taken are top down, lack an effective role for key regional co-ordination through the Integrated Care Systems/Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Local Resilience Forums, and risk marginalising the essential skills of local authorities, GPs and the voluntary and community sector in place, according to Ham amd Tuddenham. Read full story Source: HSJ, 5 May 2020
  14. News Article
    Singapore plans to open source a smartphone app its digital government team has developed to track citizens' encounters with coronavirus carriers. The app, named TraceTogether, and its government is urging citizens to run so that if they encounter a Coronavirus carrier, it’s easier to trace who else may have been exposed to the virus. With that info in hand, health authorities are better-informed about who needs to go into quarantine and can focus their resources on those who most need assistance. The app is opt-in and doesn’t track users through space, instead recording who you have encountered. To do so, it requires Bluetooth and location services to be turned on when another phone running the app comes into range exchanges four nuggets of information - a timestamp, Bluetooth signal strength, the phone’s model, and a temporary identifier or device nickname. While location services are required, the app doesn't track users, instead helping to calculate distances between them. Read full story Source: The Register, 26 March 2020
  15. News Article
    NHSX is working on a contact tracking app to trace the spread of coronavirus through the population. Contact tracking is already in limited use for people who have tested positive and the discipline has a long history in tuberculosis outbreaks. In a statement sent to HSJ, Matthew Gould, Chief Executive of NHSX, said : “NHSX are looking at whether app-based solutions might be helpful in tracking and managing coronavirus, and we have assembled expertise from inside and outside the organisation to do this as rapidly as possible.” Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 18 March 2020
  16. Content Article
    Last month, Boris Johnson argued that the downward trends in Covid cases and hospitalisations meant that it was time to scrap restrictions. Now both are rising. But the government is ending testing and most surveillance studies. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said that the rise was “to be expected” – though this foresight did not extend to having a plan to deal with the increase in infections. Instead, he dismissed the concern about the new Deltacron variant. The health secretary seemed nonchalant about the threat the virus now posed. Sajid Javid may be right that the country has weathered the worst of the pandemic, but Covid is not yet in retreat. It makes no sense to withdraw funding from a series of studies that allow the spread of the virus to be mapped in detail. Without the data, experts won’t be able to effectively monitor the disease. The country will be less effective in responding and adjusting to future waves of infection. Individuals will be less able to make informed choices about the risks involved. The clinically vulnerable face being cut off from everyday life. “It is like turning off the headlights at the first sign of dawn,” Stephen Reicher, a psychologist at the University of St Andrews, told the Guardian. “You can’t see what’s coming and you don’t know when it makes sense to turn them on again.”
  17. Content Article
    This resource by The Health Foundation provides a timeline of national policy and health system responses to Covid-19 in the UK. Themes include: Policy narrative Measures to limit spread Health and social care response Research and development Broader policy Policy history
  18. News Article
    England’s test and trace service is being sub-contracted to a myriad of private companies employing inexperienced contact tracers under pressure to meet targets, a Guardian investigation has found. Under a complex system, firms are being paid to carry out work under the government’s £22bn test and trace programme. Serco, the outsourcing firm, is being paid up to £400m for its work on test and trace, but it has subcontracted a bulk of contact tracing to 21 other companies. Contact tracers working for these companies told the Guardian they had received little training, with one saying they were doing sensitive work while sitting beside colleagues making sales calls for gambling websites. One contact-tracer, earning £8.72 an hour, said he was having to interview extremely vulnerable people in a “target driven” office that encouraged staff to make 20 calls a day, despite NHS guidance saying each call should take 45 to 60 minutes. Another call centre worker, who had no experience in healthcare or emotional support, said she suffered a nervous breakdown during an online tutorial about phoning the loved ones of coronavirus victims in order to trace their final movements. Read full story Source: The Guardian, 14 December 2020
  19. News Article
    NHS Test and Trace chief Baroness Dido Harding will be interviewed by HSJ editor Alastair McLellan at 9am tomorrow as part of HSJ’s virtual provider summit. HSJ’s subscribers working in the NHS or a non-profit organisation can register to attend the summit here. Other speakers will include new Health Education England chief executive Navina Evans and King’s Fund chief executive Richard Murray. The subjects due to be covered include how the NHS will tackle the drive to recover routine care, the service’s workforce challenges and how forthcoming legislation may impact the governance of the service. Full details of the programme can be seen here.
  20. News Article
    The introduction of weekly covid tests for NHS staff in ‘high risk areas’ will mean other groups missing out or waiting longer, well-placed sources have told HSJ. There is also understood to be a standoff between NHS England and Test and Trace over the regular testing of asymptomatic staff, which was announced for the North of England on Monday. NHS trust labs don’t have enough capacity to test all their staff; and there is not enough spare in “pillar two” commercial labs to carry out hundreds of thousands of additional tests. National bodies are said to be in disagreement over who should do it. NHSE believes they should be provided by T&T, and T&T says NHS labs should expand their capacity to carry them out themselves, HSJ has been told. A senior source involved in the testing programme said there would have to be “trade-offs” for T&T to meet the new NHS demand, with supply having to be cut for others who want tests — mostly the general population, or care home staff. At present the NHS has agreed to carry out 100,000 daily tests by the end of the month, as part of the T&T’s overall 500,000 target. It has been encouraged to do more by T&T, but any expansions may face shortages of equipment and supplies such as reagents, as well as staff and space. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 13 October 2020
  21. Content Article
    Since the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the number of cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the United States has exponentially increased. Identifying and monitoring individuals with COVID-19 and individuals who have been exposed to the disease is critical to prevent transmission. Traditional contact tracing mechanisms are not structured on the scale needed to address this pandemic. As businesses reopen, institutions and agencies not traditionally engaged in disease prevention are being tasked with ensuring public safety. Systems to support organisations facing these new challenges are critically needed. Most currently available symptom trackers use a direct-to-consumer approach and use personal identifiers, which raises privacy concerns. Kassaye et al. developed a monitoring and reporting system for COVID-19 to support institutions conducting monitoring activities without compromising privacy.
  22. Content Article
    This Independent SAGE report provides its own guidance on the measures needed to avoid another national lockdown. "We are in a crisis. Infections and hospital admissions are rapidly increasing. The testing system has broken down and it will be weeks before it is sorted. If nothing changes, there will come a point soon when the situation is so far out of control that the only possible response will be a second national lockdown and our lives will be completely disrupted once again. No one wants thisto happen. We can avoid it if we take urgent action. We must take action immediately to regain control of the pandemic and drive down infections now. We must implement immediately a comprehensive plan including rebuilding our broken test and trace system. And we must all - government, employers and public alike – take responsibility for our own part in making this plan work." Independent SAGE is a group of scientists who are working together to provide independent scientific advice to the UK government and public on how to minimise deaths and support Britain’s recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
  23. Content Article
    The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Coronavirus was set up in July 2020 to conduct a rapid inquiry into the UK Government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's purpose is to ensure that lessons are learnt from the UK Government's handling of the coronavirus outbreak to date, and to issue recommendations to the UK Government so that its preparedness and response may be improved in the future. This is the biggest review to date of the UK response to the pandemic. It comes with 71 key findings and 44 recommendations to government. In total, the APPG spoke with 65 witnesses and held 30+ hours worth of public evidence sessions streamed on social media. They received and processed just under 3,000 separate evidence submissions. 
  24. Content Article
    In these times where the pressure of track and trace is ramping up around the world in the wake of expectations of a return to normality, Matt Pattison talks with Professor Effy Vayena from ETH Zurich about her work with the Swiss government in ethics, digital and the risks and rewards viewed under an ethical lens in the TEN podcast.
  25. Content Article
    The government has unveiled a COVID-19 test and trace strategy for England, but it wasted valuable time in recognising what needed to be done after the lockdown was imposed and has been playing catch up ever since writes Chris Ham in a BMJ Opinion article. Chris says responding effectively to COVID-19 requires a blend of national and local leadership. Tragically, the government has been slow to recognise this, no more so than in plans to resume community testing and contact tracing as the lockdown is relaxed. These plans are essential to identify further outbreaks when they occur and to contain their impact. The challenge now is to ensure that every area of England has effective arrangements in place ahead of further relaxations of the lockdown in June. These arrangements must involve people being able to access tests in convenient locations, including their own homes, and for tests to be analysed rapidly. Agreement is needed on sharing test results with GPs and contact tracing staff to enable effective follow up.
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