Local test and trace being considered to combat Covid spread in Northamptonshire

A local test and trace system could be set up in Northants to help eradicate coronavirus from the county’s towns.

Since the start of August 207 people have tested positive for the virus in Northamptonshire with public health bosses saying they are concerned about the spread of the virus in Northampton, Wellingborough, Corby and Kettering.

So far those who have come into contact with people who have tested positive for Covid-19 have been contacted by the national test and trace service, which has been outsourced by the government to SERCO, but now there are moves to set up a supplementary local tracing service.

In answer to questions from the Local Democracy Reporting Service a spokesman for Northamptonshire’s local resilience forum said: “The local system has been working with national and regional colleagues on “Tier 1” complex cases since the beginning of the pandemic.

“What is new and what we are now exploring (and learning from Leicester, Blackburn with Darwen and Luton who have recently implemented this process) is having a local follow-up of those positive cases that the national call centres have not been able to reach within the first 48 hours.

“Initial estimates suggest that given the current performance of the national system, only a small number of cases per day are not reached within the first 48 hours, but we want to do everything we can to ensure all cases have contacts identified and recorded as soon as possible so we are putting in plans to have this system in place in coming weeks.”

The national testing service, which was proclaimed as ‘world beating” by Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, has come under fire since its inception.

How it currently works is that the contract tracing model has three tiers. In tier 3 are approximately 15,000 contract tracers who make initial contact with those who test positive and their contacts. Tier 2 are about 3,000 health care professionals employed nationally who are trained to interview cases and identify contacts.

Where tier 3 and tier 2 identify a degree of complexity and a ‘context’ for concern, for example, a school, health setting, care home or workplace, they will escalate to tier 1.

At tier 1 the Local Health Protection Teams from Public Health England (PHE) will work with local partners, including the Local Authority Public Health Team, to follow up cases and agree on actions to contain the outbreak.

Since the pandemic began there have been 3,753 cases in Northamptonshire and 665 deaths across all hospital, home and care home settings.

The county’s largest town Northampton has had 1,411 cases and 121 new cases have been reported since the start of the week (Aug 10). Since August 1 Wellingborough has had 27 new cases, Corby 20 cases, East Northamptonshire 16 cases, Kettering has had 14, South Northants 2 and Daventry 7.