Councils with the highest Covid infection rates in England have launched their own contact-tracing operations to plug holes in the “world-beating” £10bn government system, with some reaching 98-100% of people who fell through the gaps. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, said local areas should be given more powers to track and trace. It is able to do really straightforward cases but the minute they get more complicated it struggles,” he said. The researchers, from UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the national system must improve significantly if schools were to safely reopen next month. Tim Swift, leader of Calderdale council, said there was “two or three gaps” in the national system that it would plug with its own model, which it hopes to begin next Wednesday.

Source: The Guardian August 04, 2020 18:00 UTC