Test and Trace failure helped Indian variant spread

A report has found that 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.

Seen by the BBC, the report says that eight local authorities in England did not have access to the full data on positive tests in their area for three weeks in April and May. The government said a Track and Trace ‘software issue’ had affected a ‘handful’ of places.

The places affected are Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, York, Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock. On 11 May, the Department of Health and Social Care said that, over that period, 734 positive tests had not been reported.

The Test and Trace system, for which £37 billion has been allocated, identifies people who have been in close contact with someone who has caught coronavirus. 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.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responded: “This is deja vu and echoes the mistakes made last year with Boris Johnson’s ‘whack-a-mole’ approach. It beggars belief that yet again local health experts on ground have been left in the dark for two weeks when we know acting with speed is vital to containing an outbreak. Ministers need to explain what’s gone wrong and provide local health directors with all the resources they need to push infections down.”