Test and Trace supremo Baroness Dido Harding has come to the defence of the under fire system, describing it as “the fastest growing public service we have ever built”.
A number of MPs have called for Baroness Harding to be removed from her post after four in 10 close contacts of people who tested positive for Covid-19 in England were not reached by the system.
But speaking to the business organisation the CBI, she said that “we've built a system the size of Asda, from scratch, in five months, and we're working round the clock to keep expanding it and improving it.”
She said a network of laboratories had taken testing capacity from 2,000 tests a day in March to over 500,000. The service had processed 32m tests and had created the largest outbound call centre in the 海角视频.
And she said there had been an “extraordinary” from businesses to the system, with more than 700,000 QR posters downloaded for display in shops, pubs and restaurants.
But she added: “There's a but - and it's a big but – there is clearly more that we need to do.
“This virus is incredibly difficult to deal with and its deadly. There's millions of people carrying the virus around but not displaying any symptoms.
“Every country is grappling with the same problem, and despite everyone's best efforts, and all of the work of our team in NHS Test and Trace to be the second line of defence - after Hands Face and Space - the virus is spreading far too rapidly and too widely.”
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She said that her organisation would use the four-week national lockdown starting on Thursday to take “the next big leap forward”, adding that NHS Test and Trace would be better at helping the fight against the coronavirus when England comes out of the lockdown through the winter.
That would involve increasing the size of its testing and tracing, using rapid testing technologies and aiming to trace contacts of people with positives tests within 24-48 hours, she said.