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Boris Johnson has confessed “frustrations” in the Test and Trace system and admitted that the program needs to “improve”.
The latest figures show that less than 60% of close contacts of people who tested positive for coronavirus in England, the lowest weekly percentage since the Test and Trace program began.
Meanwhile, only 15% of people COVID-19 in England on a site in person they are receiving their result within 24 hours.
Sir Patrick Vallance admitted that there was “room for improvement”. Photo: Pippa Fowles / 10 Downing Street.
Challenged by the performance of the £ 12 billion NHS Test and Trace system at a Downing Street press conference, the Prime Minister He said: “I share people’s frustrations and I totally understand why we need to see faster response times and we need to improve it.”
“We need to make sure that people who test positive isolate themselves – that’s absolutely crucial if this is going to work the way it can.”
Johnson previously promised a “highly successful” national test and trace scheme.
Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s top scientific adviser, also admitted at Thursday’s press conference that there was “room for improvement” with the program.
“The test system has increased the numbers that they can do quite effectively, but it’s really important to focus on the number of contacts, isolate yourself as quickly as possible, and get things back as fast as possible, ideally to get the process done in 48 hours, “he said.
“It is very clear that there is room for improvement in all of that and, therefore, that would be diminishing the effectiveness of this.”
However, Sir Patrick warned that the “effectiveness” of Test and Trace was lower when there are a higher number of coronavirus infections.
The senior scientific advisor showed a model estimating that between 53,000 and 90,000 people are infected with COVID-19 every day in England.
“Obviously, with that number of infections, we also expect to see an increase in hospitalizations,” he said.
“The overall number of infections across the country continues to rise.”
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Sir Patrick warned that an increasing number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients would see a greater impact on people with other health conditions due to pressures on NHS capacity.
“That is why it is very important to keep the number of infections low if we want to reduce the number of hospitalizations,” he said.
He said the R infection rate was “about half” its natural number, but noted that as long as it is above one, the virus “continues to grow and will continue to grow at a reasonable rate.”
“It doubles maybe every 14 to 18 days, unless the R is less than one,” added Sir Patrick.
