Test and Trace reaching more than 92 per cent of contacts

NHS Test and Trace has commended the significant improvements to its contact tracing service with helping the service successfully trace 92.7 per cent of contacts.

In total, 264,960 people were reached during the week 3 to 9 December, people who otherwise would not have known there was a chance they might pass on the virus.

Changes such as improving the contact tracing website, reducing repeat calls to households, and increasing numbers of call handlers have led to a record proportion of contacts being reached, and reached faster. Contacts reached within 24 hours is now 97.3 per cent, up from 95.2 per cent on the previous week.

Two new London University laboratories are going live this week that will further increase capacity: HSL and UCL (Health Services Laboratories in partnership with University College London) which began testing on 15 December and Imperial College which began testing 16 December.

Health Minister Lord Bethell said: “Over the past few months our teams have been working incredibly hard to make the contact tracing service as effective as possible, and these latest figures show that we are reaching yet more cases and contacts. We are also continuing to roll out mass community testing across the country to improve our response to Covid-19 still further.

“Community testing programmes, with rapid, regular testing will help drive down transmission rates to help prevent areas in Tier 2 moving into the toughest restrictions. It is crucial that we are able to identify those who are asymptomatic and find positive cases at a much faster rate to help break chains of transmission.”