Portsmouth health bosses confident in new localised test-and-trace service

The public health team in Portsmouth is preparing to launch a system next month that will continue to track people who could have been in contact with coronavirus after the national trace service concedes within its 48-hour time frame - which is set to reduce to 24.

It is thought this will lead to more success when tracking down individuals through the use of locally held contact details.

Speaking during a health, wellbeing and social care meeting this week (September 8), Portsmouth's public health development manager, Dan Williams, explained the benefits of the scheme.

He said: 'Even with the best will in the world it is going to be difficult to track down every case from the national service.

'We are looking to draw from existing data sets the council already has with the proper sharing agreement in place.

'As this is effectively a life-or-death situation we would be allowed to do this. It might give us a head start of the national to contact those people.'

So far localised tracing has been trialled in Blackburn, Darwen, Luton and Leicester. And upper tier local authorities across the south east - including Portsmouth - have applied to trial their own systems.

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It is planned a team of up to 20 people who are already employed by the authority will work for the test-and-trace service.

Mr Williams said: 'We are working at the moment with HR to offer this to those who are shielding. We will then start to train those staff and have them up and running by the start of October.

'I understand when HR originally asked there was a very healthy response. We can be confident we can recruit at least 20 people.'

But Councillor Jeanette Smith had some concerns about getting hold of individuals. 'If I don't recognise the telephone number I don't pick up,' she said.

Mr Williams added: ‘We are talking to IT about what would appear on the phone when we call. Hopefully it will be the least threatening thing possible.'

All data from the test and trace service will be fed into the same system by both the national and local teams to ‘ensure there is a complete view of how the service is working’ and ‘how the virus might be spreading’.

Keep up to date with the latest coronavirus news in Portsmouth with our Coronavirus Updates Facebook group.

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