Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to support continued locally enhanced covid-19 contact tracing.

Approximately one third of all upper tier local authorities in England are currently participating in the ‘Local-0’ scheme, enabling them to trace COVID-19 cases directly within the first 24 hours. The scheme has been embedded as ‘business as usual’ practice since June following the success of a pilot project. Steps are also being taken to broaden participation with further local authorities in the coming weeks.