Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason local public health teams are not authorised to provide day zero contract tracing for covid-19 infections.

In order to increase efficiency in the contact tracing process, a ringfenced four-hour window has been provided for positive cases of COVID-19 to complete the contact tracing journey digitally before either local or national agents attempt to call them. Adding the four-hour window removed around 30% of cases that needed to be called, freeing up capacity both at local and national levels, and leading to an improvement in overall performance.