Just 72% of coronavirus sufferers’ contacts were reached and asked to self-isolate by the service last week – despite the number of new positive cases rising 17% on the week before

Thousands of England’s coronavirus sufferers’ recent contacts are failing to go into isolation after they were not reached by NHS Test and Trace.
Of Covid-19 patients who spoke to the “world-beating” system on July 23-29, 72.4% of their recent contacts were reached and told to self-isolate.
That figure has fallen two weeks in a row and is now at the second-lowest since NHS Test and Trace launched at the end of May.
The figures will spark fears some people could be unwittingly spreading the virus – which is at its most infectious at, or just before, the onset of symptoms.
And the news comes amid a worrying rise in cases.
Some 4,966 new people tested positive for Coronavirus (COIVD-19) in England in the most recent week – a rise of 17% on the week before. In the same period, testing rose by just 4%.
Restrictions were reimposed in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and West Yorkshire in the last week after local outbreaks. Preston could soon follow. And the ONS said last week that cases appear to be rising in England.
Since Test and Trace launched, it reached 199,524 close contacts of people with Covid-19 and asked them to self-isolate for two weeks (Image: Getty Images)
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Since Test and Trace launched, it reached 199,524 close contacts of people with Covid-19 and asked them to self-isolate for two weeks, as a precaution.
But a further 43,225 of their recent contacts over nine weeks were not reached by the system. That includes 5,284 in the most recent week.
“The overall percentage of contacts reached has been declining since Test and Trace began,” today’s government data report admitted.
However, officials said the fall was driven by a “reduction in contacts relating to local outbreaks”.
These are managed by local health protection teams “and have a higher success rate than those dealt with by contact tracers”, the document said.
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The boss of Serco – among the firms helping run Test and Trace – today defended the fact that 10,000 contact tracers have only spoken to an average of 2.4 people each.
Chief executive Rupert Soames admitted the system has “more capacity than we need” but said the Government “had to start somewhere”.
Mr Soames also claimed 20% of contacts are untraceable as individuals who tested positive do not know them well enough to have their personal details.
His comments comes as an anonymous contact tracer said she is effectively being “paid to watch Netflix”.
Mr Soames told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the Test and Trace programme is “improving all of the time”.
“I think we need to get this into proportion. You’re giving me the numbers saying that we’re tracing 50% of contacts, let me tell you that 96% of the people that we talk to agree to self-isolate.
Serco chief executive Rupert Soames admitted the system has “more capacity than we need” (Image: X06555)
“So we’ve got a very, very high success rate of people that we get to contact,” he said.
Pushed on the fact that this is only the known contacts that tracers have been able to reach, Mr Soames added: “So there’s been 218,000 already contacted.”
Questioned again on why tracers are still only managing to get hold of half of people’s contacts, Mr Soames said: “If somebody rang you now and I said: ‘Tell me everybody that you have met, been in contact with, in the last 48 hours, and tell me on the telephone, give me their contact details’, how many do you think that you’d be able to reel off of the top of your head?
“And the fact is that about 20% of the contacts that people give us say: ‘I know I sat next to somebody on a bus on the way in but I don’t have their contact details. I’m sorry, but my brother-in-law brought around a friend last night, I don’t have their contact details.’
“So there is an element of that, and it is about 20% at the moment where people can’t remember or never knew the contact… the details of where they were.”
A total of 47,762 people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England have had their cases transferred to the NHS Test and Trace contact tracing system since its launch, according to figures from the Department of Health and Social Care.
Of this total, 37,231 people (78.0%) were reached and asked to provide details of recent contacts, while 9,032 (18.9%) were not reached.
A further 1,499 people (3.1%) could not be reached because their communication details had not been provided.
The figures cover the period May 28 to July 29.
Since the launch of Test and Trace, 199,524 close contacts of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have been reached through the tracing system and asked to self-isolate.
This is 82.2% out of a total of 242,749 people identified as close contacts.
The contact tracing service, which employs more than 20,000 people, was meant to be accompanied by a smartphone app which would record recent contacts.
But the app was snarled up in development and still hasn’t been released.
That means people have no way of telling contact tracers which strangers they have come into contact with in public – for instance, on a bus.
Reports today suggested a slimmed-down version of the app may finally be available soon – but not actually record people’s contacts yet.
Professor Christophe Fraser, who has been advising the Department of Health and the NHS, told Times Radio there may be a breakthrough soon.
He said: “The contact tracing based on the Google Apple underlying software for the phones is continuing under development and should itself be launched in a couple of months.
“We do need an app that supports the test and trace and isolate programme and that should involve a degree of contact tracing and that is possible through the software that Google and Apple are now supporting in a way that maintains privacy.
“I think a lot of the initial barriers were less to do with the technology and more to do with the concerns around privacy.
“Google and Apple… have offered a different solution where that information is truly anonymised by being kept on your phone.”