Track and Trace - Where is the UK Now?

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JGD
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Joined: 5 Feb 2018 11:39
Location: Perry Hill, SE6 (free-transferred to Perry Vale Ward, next to Bell Green; distinct from Sydenham).
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Track and Trace - Where is the UK Now?

Post by JGD »

It is important that the country understands the importance of track and trace.

Not as a solution but as a hugely important factor in mitigating the spread of infection.

An interesting summary of events is to be found here:

https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/ ... ancock-pic

The links to audio sources do not work.
Not for the first or last time, the key players were speaking at cross-purposes...

[no-one had] suggested that the ‘little boats’ could solve the problem completely, any more than the rescuers at Dunkirk had expected to win the war. But to quote the same epidemiologist ‘it might prevent us from losing it.’

Meanwhile – and it is a big meanwhile – the Prime Minister himself had nearly died from Covid-19, a dreadful episode that had stretched the government’s competence and cohesion to its very limits.

On April 12, the very day that Boris Johnson was discharged from St Thomas’ Hospital in Westminster, Matt Hancock announced the full return of contact tracing and the app technology to support it.

[Audio clip: 12 April – Matt Hancock, Press conference]

This, remember, was a full month after Chris Whitty had cancelled the first phase of contact tracing. And – as bullish as Matt Hancock sounded – he was not announcing the start of a system, only its planning phase.

To be clear: there are essentially two sorts of tests. Antigen or PCR tests which tell a person whether they have the virus at that moment, and antibody tests which let you know if you have already had it.

They each deploy different science and need different kit.
For me, it is unclear whether the author genuinely believes that Chris Whitty failed to respond with an independent scientific and clinical view that says he should have pressed a robust case that HMG had to commit to a course of action that would deliver effective track and trace or whether he pandered to the political view that track and trace could not be delivered.
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