Greater Manchester’s version of the ‘test, track and trace’ Covid system has gone live - but the M.E.N. understands most information sent to it from the national phone bank last week was of such poor quality it had to be returned immediately.
The local version of the system is designed to take ‘complex’ cases from the national one, with officials here expecting it to eventually deal with at least 20pc of the Greater Manchester calls initially received by central handlers.
Those could be Covid cases involving care homes, schools, prisons, homeless people or police stations, for example, where more skill is required to follow up contacts and take the necessary action.
However one senior local figure told the M.E.N. that of the 93 cases that were sent across last week, ‘most had to be sent straight back because the data was so rubbish’.
Greater Manchester has been working to create an ‘enhanced’ local system in order to deal with complex Covid cases, modelled on Germany's version.
Its local triage hub will ultimately be staffed by up to 200 skilled contact tracers, with points of contact in each local authority and key public body, including the police and fire service.
Local contact tracers will sift through and handle the cases referred in by the central Serco-run phone bank, set up by the government.
The local system has now gone live and is expected to be a full seven-day operation from next week.
As part of its design, officials here have been studying the national version set up by the government and run by outsourcer Serco, which has employed thousands of people to take calls from people who believe they have symptoms.
But one senior local source said the scripts used by those handlers did not account for many of the questions members of the public - or their contacts - would be likely to ask, adding that national contact tracers had also hardly had any training.
“It requires quite a degree of questioning,” they said of the process needed to swiftly track down contacts who potentially need to self-isolate. “It’s a sensitive process.”
Gaps or errors in the information sent through by them last week meant their local counterparts were unable to do anything meaningful with most of it, they added.
The national test, track and trace system - considered crucial to the next stage in tackling coronavirus - has been described as ‘world beating’ by Boris Johnson, who initially said it would be up and running on June 1.
While a version of it did go live at the very end of May, reports have since emerged of staff sitting with nothing to do, or struggling with limited training.
One member of staff employed locally to work on the national system said they had ‘not yet done a single call’ since being hired.
Separately, Greater Manchester is still not receiving data from the so-called ‘pillar two’ testing programme organised by the government.
Officials have no idea how many people are being tested through private laboratories, which have been taking samples from drive-through and mobile centres. That has now been the case for over a month, meaning councils and GPs do not have an accurate picture of new infections here.
The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England were approached about the quality of information coming through from the national system and the continued lack of pillar two data, but no response was received.
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