On Wednesday (10th March), the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that the impact of NHS Test and Trace is still unclear—despite the government budgeting £37 billion for the project over two years.
The PAC rightly noted that Test and Trace has only provided limited evidence showing its impact on reducing the transmission of Covid-19.
A few weeks ago we looked into the claim that Test and Trace reduced the R number by 0.3 to 0.6 in October. But much of this benefit may have been due to people with symptoms self-isolating, regardless of any contact tracing intervention.
However, the PAC’s report does not deal with the other potential benefits of Test and Trace beyond reducing transmission.
A focus on contact tracing means the testing element is often forgotten, despite the fact that it accounts for the vast majority of the programme’s costs. We know that increased testing has benefits, such as determining whether people have Covid-19 and need to self-isolate, and helping schools to reopen.
Additionally, Test and Trace data underpins government decisions on local and national restrictions which certainly do affect the R rate.
A Full Fact investigation has found that:
‘The National Audit Office (NAO), which is responsible for scrutinising public spending wrote of Test and Trace in December 2020: “Of the £15 billion of funding confirmed before the November Spending Review, around £12.8 billion (85%) is assigned to testing and £1.3 billion to tracing.”The NAO added that an additional £7 billion allocated in the November Spending Review, was largely for mass testing, formerly referred to as ‘Operation Moonshot’.
Test and Trace has involved many different private and public contractors. As of the end of October, the NAO found the government had signed contracts worth £7 billion, of which £6.2 billion was for testing.
As for Serco’s involvement specifically, the NAO found that, by the end of October 2020, it had signed contracts for services associated with Test and Trace valued at £277 million, for contact tracing and managing some testing centres. At that point, the total spend on Test and Trace was £4 billion.’
We must focus on the facts and deal with them and not political point scoring in which reality has hidden in the bushes.
Jason Cridland
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