Local contact tracing to be in place in Surrey by end of month

Coronavirus infected residents not found by the national test and trace service will be sought by Surrey County Council working with Public Health England.

A local telephone-based contact tracing service is expected to be up and running by the end of this month.

If after 24 hours the national service has failed to get a response from someone who has tested positive, their details will be passed onto the Surrey team who will use their local knowledge to try to reach them.

Public health director Ruth Hutchinson said: “We will pull out all the stops to ensure we have a conversation with them and find out their contacts.”

A close contact is someone who has spent more than 15 minutes within two metres of a positive Covid case.

The Local Government Association, a national body representing local authorities, has consistently made the case for councils to have the powers and resources to lead contact tracing, and about 100 councils around the country have already launched their own complementary schemes.

“As in other areas of the South East, we are working hard to get this in place,” said Ms Hutchinson.

“In the north of the country they started this earlier, so the advantage for us is that we can learn from them.”

The latest NHS Track and Trace statistics, for 22-28 October, showed they reached just shy of 60% of cases in England. This means a total of 131,136 known people were not told to self-isolate in that week.

In contrast, the LGA’s chairman Ian Hudspeth said local health protection teams had reached 94.8% of complex cases assigned to them.

However, Ms Hutchinson said more Surrey residents with a positive Covid test result engaged with the national service than elsewhere; the county’s figure was usually just over 80%.

Portsmouth launched its own scheme yesterday (Wednesday 4). In both the idea is that any missed call from the team will show up as a single local phone number, as some people are put off answering an unknown number.

Some councils, such as Peterborough and Leeds, have taken to knocking on doors if people are not responding, but Surrey says theirs will be just a telephone service.

Ms Hutchinson said: “Our contact tracers have nearly finished their training but we’re having to do our modelling, estimating the number of calls we’ll get. We’re not waiting, we’re very busy. It is not as if there’s a vacuum, there is a national system in place.

“We’ve got a high percentage that engage with that. However, it will be really good to increase that percentage. It is fundamental that people isolate; that is absolutely crucial to stop the spread of the virus.

“It is a big operation, but definitely worth the investment.”

She added: “The rates here are lower than England but they’ve still been going up in the last few weeks in particular, so the more we can do as a local system the better.”

There will be 16 local contact tracers in Surrey, mainly existing council staff who are being given “robust online training developed by Public Health England”. Four of these have been recruited especially.

They have also identified other employees they can use if case numbers significantly increase.

The service is using the small amount of funding left over from a government grant given to local authorities back in June. Surrey was allocated nearly £3.48 million to mitigate against and manage local Covid outbreaks.

Communities secretary Robert Jenrick said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show a few weeks ago: “People who know their own community, particularly harder to reach communities, are bound to be better than Whitehall or national contact tracers.”

Fines for not self-isolating if contacted by NHS Test and Trace start at £1,000 and increase up to £10,000 for repeat offenders.

There is a legal requirement to self-isolate for 10 days if you test positive, or 14 days if someone in your household has tested positive or you are contacted by NHS Test and Trace and informed to self-isolate.

If you’re asked to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace and you’re on a low income, unable to work from home and will lose income as a result, you may be entitled to a payment of £500 from your local authority.