Coronavirus: Blackburn’s contact tracing team reaching 90 per cent of people ‘world-beating’ national system was missing

A local contact-tracing system set up in the town with England’s worst coronavirus infection rates is now reaching 90 per cent of people the government’s £10bn system was failing get hold of.

Blackburn with Darwen council created a specialist team to track Covid-19 cases in the area this week after the country-wide system was found effectively unfit for purpose.

Dozens of staff have been redeployed from other departments in a bid to reach residents who were being repeatedly missed by NHS test and trace – a service Boris Johnson previously promised would be “world beating”.

Now, after five days in operation, the Blackburn team is reported to be reaching almost everyone it needs to.

In a tweet on Saturday morning, Dominic Harrison, the council’s director of public health, said: “After one weeks operation, we are now managing to contact 9/10 of the cases the national system could not contact.”

The success was put down to callers using a Blackburn phone number – widely viewed with less suspicion than an 0300 number appearing on mobile screens – and localised knowledge.

Paul Fleming, the council’s director of business change who is leading the drive, added: “A local number and more local conversation about wider support is working for us.”

He said some home visits were also being done in cases where people were still not picking up phones.

The revelation now looks set to add succour to growing demands that contact tracing – considered vital in controlling coronavirus spread – needs to be coordinated at a localised level.

Sandwell council in the West Midlands has already set up its own team after its public health director, Lisa McNally, declared the national service was failing; while in Leicester, council staff have been deployed to carrying out door-to-door knocks.

Officials in hard-hit Kirklees, Calderdale and Bradford – all in West Yorkshire – are all understood to be looking into the possibility of creating their own teams, with the support of Public Health England.

And, in an apparent admission of its own failings, Whitehall officials indicated on Thursday that councils may be given real-time infection data – a move that would allow them to do their own tracing.

NHS test and trace itself employs more than 20,000 people through private firms such as Serco and Sitel.

Call handlers aim to make contact with those infected and their contacts to advise them to self-isolate, but, on Monday, independent researchers found it was reaching just 52 per cent of people – well below the 75 per cent needed to control the virus.