Resistance to NHS test and trace likely, Public Health England admits

Some Britons will be resistant to going into isolation when contacted by Covid-19 tracers because lockdown has had such a gruelling impact on the public, a Public Health England chief has recognised.

Prof Isabel Oliver, who helped design the Government  programme to trace people at risk of infection, told the Sunday Telegraph that the "vast majority" of those already contacted were proving willing to help.

However, she said the public were also already asking questions of call operators, and she signalled it would be too optimistic to expect 90 per cent of those contacted to help.

"This has been a very prolonged outbreak" said the interim director of the National Infection Service, explaining why PHE was factoring in an expectation that a minority would be either uncooperative or uncontactable.

"Invariably we find that everyone is very willing to help, but these are exceptional circumstances, with an outbreak that has been so prolonged and had such an extensive impact on the people's lives, so it is understanding that some people will be resistant. But having said that we are finding that lots of people are supportive and we are very grateful for that because for the programme to be successful in controlling the virus - we need that support from the nation as a whole."

The test and trace programme got under way in England on Thursday, and Prof Oliver and her team were immediately forced to iron out IT problems which led to some of the tracers being unable to log in to the Government system.

However, she insisted "the first 24 hours have gone well". "There have been a few issues that we have identified which we are working on, but no major problems," she added. "Our web tool has worked very well." The delays in getting tracers logged in was because they were running a "very secure system".

The operation may not be fully operational at local level for another month, other figures involved in the launch have suggested. A smartphone app being developed by NHSx to assist the programme is still believed to be weeks away from launch following trials on the Isle of Wight. Several directors of public health also told the Telegraph that links between the central  operation and local councils were still being rushed through on Friday.

In a video to staff, meanwhile, Rupert Soames, chief executive of Serco which helped recruited 10,000 of the new 25,000 contact tracers, said the prospect of “all the strands of this would come together at precisely the right time belongs only to the fantasies of those people who have never organised anything more than a tea party”.

The Government has repeatedly denied claims the programme had been brought forward from next week to distract from the row over alleged lockdown breaches by Dominic Cummings.

Prof Oliver, meanwhile, said public trust is vital in the coming weeks. "We would never expect to be able to get hold of everybody so we have taken that into account in our estimates on the effectiveness of the programme," she said. "Clearly it's really important that basic messages such as hygiene also continues and social distancing, but all of these things together, they should combine to limit levels of infection."

A host of contact tracers have complained that the technology has not been working in time. One from London, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "I got an email at about 10.30pm on Wednesday night letting me know that the CTAS site was going live at 8am on Thursday.

"I tried to log on just after 8am and had issues with the link emailed to me just showing an error page, I couldn’t get through on the phone and the web chat took about an hour to reply and provided a generic response.

"My shift was supposed to be 8am-4pm, I was only able to access the CTAS system at about 2pm. I then didn’t have any cases assigned to me."

Another, from the Wirral, said that there have been numerous technical difficulties so far, and that many contact tracers had experienced these. “It’s not been very successful so far," the tracer added. “We all know that each of us is having the same problem, so there’s a collective anxiety. A lot of my colleagues haven’t had calls yet. We had one day of team meetings and we had an online thing for training."

It came as Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, last night warned Britain faced a "critical week" as lockdown measures are eased. He said the lack of a "fully functioning" tracing programme made the Government's decision "more risky".