Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 26 July 2021 to Question 35761 on Coronavirus: York, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of local contact tracing compared to the NHS Test and Trace service in order to understand (a) best practice in contact tracing and (b) how future funding for contact tracing can best be deployed to detect and control covid-19.

No specific assessment has been made.

NHS Test and Trace and local authorities already work within a joint framework focused on preventing, identifying and managing local outbreaks and engaging with local communities to support effective testing, contact tracing and self-isolation. Within this framework, local public health teams have more control through community-led testing, expanded local tracing partnerships and the sharing of data, insight and analysis used to identify clusters of new infections and potential local outbreaks.

During the financial years 2020/21 and 2021/22, the Government has so far provided £2.1 billon of funding through the Contain Outbreak Management Fund which provides funding to local authorities in England to help reduce the spread of coronavirus and support local public health.