Public health officials and local leaders still have no idea how many people are testing positive for Covid-19 in Greater Manchester, due to continued chaos within the national system.
Health boss Sir Richard Leese said there were an ‘enormous number of people’ being tested at locations such as Manchester Airport and the Etihad about whom the region has no information whatsoever.
He said they don’t know who they are, where they work, or whether they have tested positive. As a result there is a 'crucial gap' in the region's ability to fight the virus, he added.
The data issue has now been dragging on since May 4 and stems from the two separate testing systems currently in operation.
One involves tests carried out by the public sector, which are then processed in NHS laboratories - such as at the Manchester Royal Infirmary - and fed back to public health officials, who use them to track the pandemic’s pattern here and plan local infection control.
But results from the second set of testing, which is carried out through a government process at various locations - including Manchester Airport - before being processed at private laboratories, have not been reaching local authorities since the first week in May.
Last week, the Department of Health and Social Care insisted in a statement to the Manchester Evening News it had been sharing that data with Public Health England for several weeks.
But one exasperated local source said the problem lay with the data itself, which they said cannot currently be broken down to local level and therefore cannot be usefully shared with councils.
Yesterday the region's health lead Sir Richard Leese said Greater Manchester was still in the dark as a result of the logjam.
“We still don't have the data from the national testing arrangements - at the Airport and the Etihad, for example,” he said.
“We don’t have the data from there, so there are an enormous number of people that are being tested but we don’t know who they are, where they work, we don’t know what their results are.”
Until that data is received, he said, it was impossible to get an accurate picture of where people are catching the virus.
Last week the number of new cases known to Greater Manchester was 438, down on 737 a month earlier, but he said that was not a true gauge due to the missing data.
The lack of information has continued as the region ramps up plans to ‘test, track, trace and isolate’ in the next phase of the pandemic.
Asked how significant the missing data was against that backdrop, Sir Richard said that information was currently a ‘crucial gap’ in the region’s battle against the virus.
“Undoubtedly there will be outbreaks of Covid-19, but if we can identify them, localise them and contain them, then we make sure it doesn’t become a renewal of the epidemic,” he said.
“In order to do that we need to have that data.
"So when we start talking about returning to normal and all the things that we want to do, if we don’t have that data it is a crucial gap in order to be able to provide people with the confidence that we can manage Covid-19 going forward over the next 18 months, two years.”
Public Health England have been approached for comment.
The Department of Health and Social Care said it was 'actively working on a solution to share anonymised data with our stakeholders', with councils a top priority. It said it had been engaging with the Local Government Association on the issue.
It is understood Greater Manchester is now trying to persuade the government to merge the two testing systems together in a partnership, so that public health departments can get hold of all the relevant results.
