Testing system overwhelmed as ministers scramble to avoid a second lockdown
By Daniel Capurro,
Front Bench Editor
Tsiteeri:
With the North East of England now in semi-lockdown, the number of people across the country under stricter Covid-19 measures is at 10 million. With Liverpool, the West Midlands and Leeds all reportedly being considered for further restrictions, it's likely that soon one in six Britons will find themselves in some kind of lockdown.
Preparing for the surge
Today, we report on Government plans for a traffic light system for each region, in which red would entail strict measures and green a relatively light touch. The amber level would include policies such as widening the requirement to wear masks in public. Unlike previous approaches, the “escalation framework”, as it is known, would be made publicly accessible so that people could see if their local area was moving closer towards lockdown.
The Telegraph has also become aware of further preparations being made for a surge in cases, including hospitals and councils being given a fortnight to find extra beds for coronavirus patients, and London preparing “step down” beds so that recovered patients are not immediately sent to care homes.
In a grim echo of March, Britain appears to be following its European neighbours in their mistakes. Spain, too, saw a surge in infections among young people and, having failed to get its track-and-trace system up to scratch, now faces a second crisis in its hospitals, particularly in Madrid.
By locking down in March, the UK effectively reset the infection clock and bought itself time to build a system to cope with winter. Yet, while even a fortnight ago, ministers were talking as if the worst was behind us and were exhorting workers to head back to the office, that time appears to have been wasted.
Who could have seen it coming?
The test-and-trace system is not functioning. Yesterday, Dido Harding, who heads up the national testing effort, admitted that one million people a day were applying for just 230,000 available tests and that 90 per cent of tests were not being processed in 24 hours. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that some contact tracing is taking longer than two weeks, the entire period in which those contacted should have been self-isolating.
Such is the strain on the public sector that the Government plans to outsource much of the track-and-trace system. Laura Donnelly reports exclusively that the logistics will be put out to tender in the hope that a delivery giant such as Amazon will take it on.
Baroness Harding attempted to pass on the blame for the testing failures, insisting that nobody, including the Sage group of advisers, was able to foresee that the reopening of schools and the return to offices would increase demand for testing. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the Commons, said people should stop their “endless carping” about testing failures and instead “celebrate this phenomenal success of the British nation” in getting to 250,000 tests a day.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, a member of Sage, immediately hit back at Baroness Harding, saying that the group had “been clear in the advice that the UK faced an inevitable increase in community transmission and cases after the summer and needed a fully functional and trusted track, trace, isolate in place.”
Lockdown 2, lockdown harder
Leaving the blame game aside, it’s clear that we have not successfully used the summer to prepare, and that much of the country will spend at least some of this winter at a higher level of lockdown. The battle now is to avoid the entire country having to do so at once.
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