Test and Trace is still key; where’s Dido Harding hiding? – Jayne Dowle

AS Matt Hancock makes abundantly clear, we should believe no promises on when the third national lockdown might ease.
By Jayne Dowle
Published 14th Jan 2021, 05:49 BST

He reminds us that he is the Health Secretary after all so does have some authority to speak, but why has he suddenly gone quiet on the UK Test and Trace system which promised to be the envy of the world when it launched last summer?

Is it because, as reports suggest, the £22bn programme is under immense strain as it is being staffed by inexperienced call-centre telesales workers drafted in by public services provider Serco?

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Or is it something to do with clinicians spending too much of their time answering medical queries from under-qualified call-handlers? Or is it because Baroness Dido Harding, the head of Test and Trace, seems to have disappeared?

Are testing arrangements for Covid adequate?Are testing arrangements for Covid adequate?
Are testing arrangements for Covid adequate?

The last time we saw anything of her was in November when she appeared before Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee and its chairman Jeremy Hunt slammed her for the “three per cent success rate” of England’s contact tracing programme.

Hunt pressured Harding to explain why only “three per cent of the total theoretical maximum” of people infected were self-isolating. I could answer that; because many of those unfurloughed, on low incomes, self-employed or with no recourse to government support will continue to go to work because they can’t afford not to.

Meanwhile, private consultants working for the NHS on the programme have been paid an average of £163,000, amounting to a total of £375m.

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