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10-11-2020, 12:51 PM
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Health and Social Care Committee - Lessons Learnt

https://twitter.com/CommonsHealth/st...7Ctwgr%5Etweet

We'll question @didoharding & @SMHopkins on NHS Test & Trace, plus experts @JoMartin_path, Prof Sir John Bell, @profchrisham & Prof Dame Anne Johnson
Will the truth be told .....
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10-11-2020, 12:54 PM
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Re: Health and Social Care Committee - Lessons Learnt

NHS Test and Trace chief Dido Harding said England had gone into a second lockdown with its R number "significantly lower" than in March, partly due to the fact NHS test and trace exists.

However, she told the Commons Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee that test and trace on its own was not the "silver bullet to holding back the tide of Covid".

She said: "Unfortunately the evidence in the UK and in every other country in Europe is that’s not the case. The way we have to tackle the disease is through of a variety of different interventions and we are one of the ways, not the only way."

Asked about the monthly budget for contract tracing, she told the committee she didn’t have a precise monthly figure. But she said for the total test and trace operation, 80% of the budget goes on testing and 20% on contact tracing, technology and overhead support.
Why does "Incompetent" Harding NEVER have the "figures" ..... all she has to do is ask her PA to get them ....
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10-11-2020, 12:56 PM
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Re: Health and Social Care Committee - Lessons Learnt

Also appearing before the select committees with Dido Harding is Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser for NHS Test and Trace. She says the team are increasingly recognising the role of asymptomatic transmission in spreading Covid-19 in the UK.

She says the ONS survey found that only one-third of Covid cases are being detected through symptomatic testing.
"So that means there’s a large number out there who are either not coming forward for testing or are asymptomatic and are potentially transmitting," Hopkins says.

She says it is important to keep social distancing but it will become “more important” to try and find the undetected cases in the population in order to try and slow the spread.
Which is where "mass testing" be integral to control of the pandemic.
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10-11-2020, 01:03 PM
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Re: Health and Social Care Committee - Lessons Learnt

Harding tells the select committees that an NHS Test and Trace survey found that 54% of people complied fully with the self-isolation rules.

But she says it was "quite hard to track where people are every day" because "we live in a liberal democracy. The majority of people are trying very hard to comply when they are asked to and when they are not it is because they might have just popped out to get some fresh air, or if they have gone anywhere they have gone to buy emergency prescriptions or food," she says.

Harding says that throughout the time that test and trace has been in operation it has found between 40% and 50% of the positive Covid cases per day, with the Office of National Statistics estimating around 50,000 people per day are getting Covid-19.

She says one of the biggest challenges is “finding people who have got the disease who don’t know they have it. No system can reach people whose contact details we don’t have,” she says.
She's always got excuses .....

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt suggests that as few as 3% of people who should be self-isolating are in fact staying at home, because of undetected cases and contacts who are not reached. He says the proportion was no more than 20%. But NHS Test and Trace boss Dido Harding says: “If it’s a tool that contributes to 20%-plus of our fight against Covid, then it’s a hugely valuable and important tool."

She says financial difficulties could be one factor stopping people from staying put. “All the evidence shows that people are not complying with isolation not because they don’t want to, but because they find it very difficult."

Hunt questions whether the test and trace system had focused too much on increasing the volume of testing rather than looking at the proportion of people failing to self isolate.

Harding says the system has been able to maintain its contact tracing rate while testing increased "five-fold" since May – more than any other major European country.
So she says .....
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10-11-2020, 01:10 PM
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Re: Health and Social Care Committee - Lessons Learnt

Health Secretary Matt Hancock insists the NHS will be ready to start deploying a coronavirus vaccine as soon as humanly possible.

If regulators are able to give the green light in the next few weeks, some people could get their jab before Christmas – a most welcome gift for those at highest risk of severe Covid-19 illness. But Hancock doesn’t want people to get their hopes up too soon or assume life can now return to “normal” - it can’t.

Until and unless mass vaccination can happen, society needs to use the other weapons at its disposal to fight the virus and stop the spread. That means sticking with social distancing and face masks, and testing people who may have the virus, and asking them to isolate.

The UK is still in the second wave and the actions taken by all of us now will influence how it plays out.
Exactly ..... No cause for rejoicing just yet .....
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10-11-2020, 05:48 PM
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Re: Health and Social Care Committee - Lessons Learnt

NHS test and trace: Dido Harding says scheme failed to predict demand

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...predict-demand

Appearing at a joint meeting of the health and social care committee and science and technology committee, Dido Harding said that the demand for testing in September took the service by surprise.

“As schools came back we saw demand significantly outstrip [the] planned capacity delivery,” she said, adding a similar surge in demand was seen in Scotland. “None of us were able to predict that in advance,” she said.

Challenged by Carol Monaghan, the MP for Glasgow, as to how it was possible that such a surge had not been predicted, Lady Harding said: “The reality is that we are all learning about Covid, we are learning about how the disease behaves and we are learning about how all of us as human beings and a society behave, and we are seeing that learning happening in real time across the whole world.”

Harding later said the system had expected some increase in demand, and had been building capacity to 500,000 tests a day by the end of October. “With the benefit of hindsight the balance between the supply and the demand forecast wasn’t right. Clearly that is true,” she said.

Asked when the next major surge in demand for testing was anticipated, Harding replied it was not her place to answer and that it was not an operational issue. “I defer to the clinical experts in that, rather than think that it is my job to know the answer to that question,” she said.

Graham Stringer, the MP for Blackley and Broughton, responded: “You are the executive chair of the National Institute of Health Protection, I would have expected you to have asked that question [about future demand] of professionals before and have an answer for this committee.”

Stringer said he was “surprised and shocked” at Harding’s failure to answer not only that question, but queries about the proportion of funding that was spent on local versus national test-and-trace efforts.

“That is the crux of the debate about test and trace, whether doing things locally is more effective than centrally,” he said.

Harding was also unable to say how long it was taking for the contacts of someone who had requested a test, and subsequently tested positive, to be told to self-isolate. The government scientific advisory body Sage has previously said this period was crucial for test and trace to reduce the R number – the number of people each person with the virus infects.

I can’t give you a complete end to end average at this stage,” Harding said. “Clearly we have lots of work to do to get to the majority of people being tested and contacted within 72 hours, but we are reaching a meaningful proportion of that.”

Anyone wishing to get a test was now able to do so, although she was later forced to clarify that testing was only available for those with symptoms of Covid-19.
Never a straight answer from Harding - Will no one rid us of this incompetent "chair" ..... i
 

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