Coronavirus: Contact Tracing

(asked on 19th May 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish a list of participating councils in the local test and trace scheme; what the (a) conditions and (b) timescales were for that pilot; and what the evaluation plan is for that scheme.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 27th May 2021

NHS Test and Trace works closely with local authorities as a ‘team of teams’ to further improve the United Kingdom’s response to COVID-19. A list of the participating councils is attached.

We are currently running two pilots. The ‘Local-0 Pilot’, where local authorities are provided positive cases to trace, bypassing the National Contact centre.  There are 130 local authorities who participated. The pilot has been evaluated and the service is currently being strengthened to make it available for all local authorities should they wish to participate and have the resources available.

The ‘Non-Household Contacts Pilot(s)’ is providing non-household contacts to local authorities, where the National Contact Centre have been unable to reach them.  These pilots were with a very small number of local authorities but showed promising results. As such the pilots will be expanded to a wider group and evaluated further. The outcome of these will determine whether this is to be offered to local authorities as a standard service, for those who express interest in this and have the resource capacity to support it and maintain an agreed service standard.

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