More help needed; serious question Test and Trace

TSSeasider

Well-known member
Got this email today

Dear TSSeasider

We would like to invite you to join 7 others to join a round table meeting with Dido Harding on (a day in March.)

...Dido Harding is keen to hear from you first-hand about the experiences and challenges your community has experienced through the pandemic and the NHS Test and Trace response to help her to drive the improvements forward.


Right, as I said about the roundtable around self isolating, it's worth a try to influence things.

So, I know what my I've heard from the local community where I work, but again I think it's important to listen to the widest possible group about their experiences of T&T.

If you've had experience what worked well v what didn't work well

Have you avoided taking a test, if so, why

Have you taken a test as part of the wider community testing. Yes/no reasons why etc.

Do you use the NHS App? Had a message, followed it or ignored it?

Any comment that doesn't include how much it's costing (although I will ask whether all the funding allocated is actually being spent)
 
Last edited:
Any comment that doesn't include how much it's costing (although I will ask whether all the funding allocated is actually being spent)

Could you suggest that they're more open about the expenditure and where it's going, perhaps monthly updates split into test, trace and other with sub-analysis if possible.

At the moment there is a lot of misinformation about the spending and a perception that the money is being poured into a hole in the ground, the way to counter that is with facts.
 
Most of the money is being spent on the testing, I believe. But it’s the contact tracing that’s failed.
They have only been able to talk with no more than 60% of the identified contacts. Without efficient tracing, the whole thing falls over and the entire budget is wasted.
 
The most worrying thing we've experienced is being pinged by the app and told to isolate for five days which we thought strange until we realised the contact with the infected person was five days earlier, that would mean we could have been spreading the virus for five days without knowing it. It's happened twice in our family so it seems to be a standard time frame to actually get positive results on the system which defeats the object
 
The most worrying thing we've experienced is being pinged by the app and told to isolate for five days which we thought strange until we realised the contact with the infected person was five days earlier, that would mean we could have been spreading the virus for five days without knowing it. It's happened twice in our family so it seems to be a standard time frame to actually get positive results on the system which defeats the object

Not really, from first exposure to becoming infectious yourself is going to take 5 - 7 days so if you're being told to SI from day 5 you're protecting the community from most if not all of the infection risk.
 
Lostseasider I thought you were contagious from about 3 days after infection and before you show symptoms
 
Any chance of a report on how this went?
Yep; I'll give a bit more detail when I've read my notes but one of the questions I asked was about when we see the telephone figures with T&T it would be really helpful to explain how those figures were arrived at (I can't remember who put that on here)

So far £14bn has been spent, there is headroom to spend more.

Roughly 80% has been spent on testing
Of that 80% was on staffing

100 million tests performed (last week, so that's more been done since)

Local Authorities get either £14 or £17 per LFT (I can't remember which one without looking back)

The diagnostics for PCR is £45/test.

I could be cynical, but I did think it's a nice little earner for LA's, so I can see why they keep encouraging us to get tested even if you don't have symptoms.

Me and her had quite a serious discussion about the lack of trust in "the state" and what can be done about it.

I'll write more tomorrow, but I did say, the easiest way to establish trust is to act in a trustworthy way.

I'll put some more up tomorrow.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top