Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve contact tracing services.

The UK Health Security Agency continues to work with local authorities to make ongoing improvements to contact tracing services. This includes adapting its operational systems to give local authorities more flexibility in prioritising which cases they receive first and focus on, investigating potential improvements to the digital aspect of contact tracing, and reviewing scripts and training for contact tracers.

This builds on existing partnerships between the national tracing service and local authorities through which contact tracers are currently reaching 89.8% of positive cases and 85.7% of their confirmed contacts, with 97.1% of contacts reached within 24 hours of being identified as a contact of someone who tested positive.