London records highest jump in Covid cases in England as Tier 3 pressure mounts December 11, 2020 London recorded the biggest leap in the proportion of people testing positive for coronavirus in the week to 5 December, cranking up fears of tighter restrictions for the capital ahead of the Christmas period. Figures released today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the level of Covid in London jumped from around 1 [...]
Test and Trace to scrap 14-day isolation period for Covid contacts December 11, 2020 People who have been in contact with someone who tested positive with coronavirus will be given daily Covid tests instead of having to isolate for a fortnight under new government plans. The Test and Trace pilot scheme is being trialled in several schools, businesses and universities across the country. Close contacts of people with Covid-19 [...]
Spending watchdog urges government to ‘stop throwing money’ at NHS Test and Trace December 11, 2020 The UK’s spending watchdog has urged ministers to “stop throwing money” at NHS Test and Trace, after the beleaguered system last month received an extra £7bn in funding despite repeatedly failing to achieve targets. In a scathing report on the programme’s performance so far, the National Audit Office (NAO) slammed Test and Trace for failing [...]
Excel glitch “propelled England to a different stage of the pandemic,” researchers say November 27, 2020 A Microsoft Excel error which caused positive Covid-19 results to go missing has been linked to 1,500 excess deaths, researchers have suggested. Thiemo Fetzer and Thomas Graeber of Warwick and Harvard universities, respectively, examined the impact of the glitch, which affected positive cases in late September and October. The lost cases meant that 16,000 contacts [...]
NHS Test and Trace missed almost 140,000 Covid contacts last week November 26, 2020 England’s beleaguered Test and Trace system failed to reach 40 per cent of people who came into contact with coronavirus last week, meaning almost 140,000 people required to self-isolate did not do so. Figures released today by the Department for Health and Social Care showed that NHS Test and Trace only managed to tell 60.3 [...]