Latest updates: head of NHS test and trace says system is ‘not the single silver bullet’ for tackling virus
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It has been a busy morning for select committees. Thérèse Coffey, the work and pensions secretary, has also been giving evidence this morning, and she used her appearance at the work and pensions committee to shoot down what is reportedly the Treasury’s favoured plan for a replacement to the £20-per-week universal credit uplift.
Here are two lines from her evidence so far.
Coffey appears to slap down idea of replacing UC uplift with one off payments to benefit recipients (an idea reported to be favoured by the Chancellor):
“a steady sum of money would probably be more beneficial to claimants and customers to help with that budgeting process”
Coffey says she’s “not aware of extra costs that would have been unduly incurred” during the pandemic by disabled people on ESA & job seeker’s allowance who’ve not received an uplift.
Today’s report by Disability Benefits Consortium sets out those costs: https://t.co/TZSjPfSmfW pic.twitter.com/87LEExUNIc
Dido Harding, head of NHS test and trace, is giving evidence to the Commons science committee. Here are some of the main lines from her evidence so far.
It’s entirely understandable that everyone out wants there to be a single, clear and straightforward route out of the Covid crisis. I think it’s very tempting to view … that test and trace stands single-handedly to prevent the virus spreading, and lockdowns coming.
But actually we are part of an overall system … Test and trace is only one of the elements that enables us to fight Covid. We are not the single silver bullet.
“None of us were able to predict” coronavirus would mutate or variants would emerge – Dido Harding, head of the National Institute for Health Protection
Woth saying that Harding has used a similar excuse before when she was under-fire for testing capacity battling to reach demand levels in early autumn
https://t.co/QaqT7ezzJA
Dido Harding says “none of us were able to predict” that the virus would mutate or that new variants would emerge.
Dido Harding suggests “key thing” people want fr Test & Trace is results back the next day – rather than w/in exact 24 hour target – thus their figures.
Science committee chair Greg Clark disagrees, saying exact info is “crucial” for decisions that will be made on lockdown.
The new variant, which is now endemic and accounts for, I think, more than 70% of cases across the country, I think has broad implications, not just for NHS test and trace, but for the whole country, the whole world’s fight against Covid.
It means that we all have to keep our distance more rigorously, more hand washing, more face-mask wearing.
What became clear as contact tracing scaled through the autumn was that that was really annoying families with having multiple phone calls into the same household, particularly as then you’d extended to the isolation support calls that we also make to people who are isolating.
There was a lot of evidence that we gathered from our local authority colleagues and directly through our contact tracing teams that this was acting as a counterproductive element of our journey that was putting people off following the guidance.
