Tory failures over the Covid-19 crisis have cost thousands of lives.
Now Boris Johnson claims a “world-beating” contact tracing system will succeed in containing the virus.
Contact tracing has been used to control diseases for decades from the US syphilis outbreak in the 1930s to the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa.
Johnson said his “test, track and trace” system would be in place by 1 June. Yet every element of it is in crisis.
The government is trialling a new smartphone app on the Isle of Wight. The rollout of the app across Britain has already been delayed until at least mid-June.
And security experts have warned that it could lead to data breaches and interference from the state (see below).
Some 25,000 new workers have been enlisted in the “Operation Charcoal” human contact tracing scheme. Yet at least 15,000 of them won’t have clinical training.
Workers are already complaining that outsourcing giants such as Serco and Capita haven’t trained them properly.
Call centre outsourcer Sitel also claims to be training people as contact tracers.
One worker described how they were given just one day online training, where a single manager was responsible for teaching 100 new recruits.
“After the full day of training people were still asking the most basic things,” he said.
Recruits
Other recruits have been left unable to begin as the technology won’t work on their PCs and laptops. One said, “You can’t speak to anybody, there are massive communication issues. It’s a ludicrous situation.”
The government didn’t have to start from scratch. There are roughly 5,000 environmental health workers who track the spread of norovirus, salmonella and other outbreaks.
Health expert John Ashton said these “together with currently furloughed local government civil servants could be recruited into the call pool”.
And he said these workers “have the detailed knowledge to engage with their local communities and ensure a high-quality test, track and trace service”.
A well-run human contact tracing system would need to be backed up by a quicker regime of testing.
It relies on having information about who has coronavirus. Yet the Tories have refused to properly gather such information for months.
They began with a “herd immunity” strategy of letting the virus spread.
This, and the fact that the government was woefully underprepared, explains why it dropped community testing for the virus in March.
Since then health workers, care home staff and other key workers have been unable to access tests. People who are tested face lengthy waits for their results.
The resources are there to carry out the vital work needed to tackle Covid-19. Instead of harnessing it, the Tories focus on handing out lucrative contracts to their mates in outsourcing firms.
Their deliberate failings will mean more deaths.
Contact tracing can slow the spread of disease
The government’s new app—currently being trialled on the Isle of Wight—has prompted fears from security experts and tech companies.
The app runs in the background of smartphones. If a person develops Covid-19 symptoms, the app can notify everyone they came into contact with, and advise them to isolate.
Research by cyber security experts Chris Culnane and Vanessa Teague found that the app doesn’t protect users’ privacy and could be hacked.
Their analysis shows that the data collected could be used for other purposes, or kept forever.
They also warned that hackers could prevent alerts being set out warning of outbreaks.
This would effectively render the app useless.
The research says collecting all information centrally makes it more vulnerable to hackers.
It said that data should be exchanged between each handset individually instead.
“There can still be bugs and security vulnerabilities in either the decentralised or the centralised models,” said Teague.
Decentralised
“But the big difference is that a decentralised solution wouldn’t have a central server with the recent face-to-face contacts of every infected person.
“So there’s a much lower risk of that database being leaked or abused.”
And because the data is unencrypted—therefore fairly easy to get hold of—it could be accessed by other agencies, such as the police.
Last week Apple and Google, the giant firms that run most software on smartphones, said the government’s method doesn’t protect data.
They released their own software updates that will facilitate other contact tracing apps in countries such as Germany, Ireland and Italy.
But the NHSX—the newly formed digital arm of the health service—said it would press ahead with the planned app.
Developing technology to try and track the spread of infection, and contain diseases, is a good thing.
But there will be serious downsides and limitations as long as it takes place under a system based on competition and profit.
Outsourcer Serco was found to have accidentally exposed the emails of almost 300 contact tracers last week. Its contract stresses guaranteeing data security.
Serco has a history of grabbing bloated government contracts. In 2013 it was accused of charging the government money to run the electronic tag system for people who were dead, had left the country or were in jail.
Reports indicated that up to one in six of some 16,000 tags were fake. The firm was forced to pay £3.7 million after an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.
Yet it grabbed another £70 million in 2014 to run Yarl’s Wood detention centre. This was despite complaints of sexual assault and “inappropriate behaviour” by Serco workers.
Serco fat cats have got rich from the privatisation pushed by national and local governments for decades.
It’s time to end its reign of chaos.
Contact tracing apps have run into problems across the world. In Australia, some 5.87 million people downloaded an app in a month, yet no states have reported using the data.
In New York, millionaire Michael Bloomberg has his hands all over the technology.
Bloomberg Philanthropies is “assisting in the hiring process” of contact tracers and is funding the development of three smartphone apps for the state.
Some countries are using intensive methods to trace contracts.
In South Korea, credit card statements, CCTV footage and mobile phone locations have been used.
And in Singapore cops have been investigating knocking on people’s doors in an effort to track down those who might have been in close proximity to coronavirus patients.
Defending Palestine and the climate are one fight
New GMB strikes called at Amazon warehouse in Coventry
Rishi Sunak has pulled the brake
Students don't want to attend
