Forum Topic

Not going well is it?

The track and trace system is malfunctioning as is being frequently reported by everyone not in the government.  Someone’s counting the days:-Days since WHO said "test, test, test": 210Days since PM promised world-beating track & trace: 144Days since he promised all test results in 24 hrs: 112Test results in 24 hrs: 25.7%Days when test & trace has done its job: 0Are they just counting the days till a vaccine comes along?  Despite much progress that’s still many months away from becoming generally available.

Jonathan Callaway ● 1289d12 Comments

Losing your sense of smell is a key indicator of having caught the virus.  Perhaps the Telegraph staff should be tested?

Jonathan Callaway ● 1287d

The corruption in the procurement process is so bad that even the Telegraph has begun dimly to notice: "Covid procurement falls victim to whiff of cronyism: The Government must publish the details of PPE contracts awarded in a hurry to dispel suspicions of misconduct," writes Jeremy Warner today (the rest is behind the paywall) . A whiff? Suspicions? It's an absolute stink! The combination of corruption and incompetence is beginning to make even government supporters like Warner take notice.

Richard Carter ● 1287d

Quite apart from the corruption involved in shovelling money to private companies for testing and tracing without proper tendering, the basic approach adopted is wrong. The government has opted for a centralised test and trace system using call centres, when what they should have done was to use local public health officials who (a) know their areas and (b) are already skilled in T&T as it's already part of their jobs.One problem is that the public health system has become grossly underfunded by the last 10 years of austerity: the answer to this was not to spend billions on private companies without the required skills but to reinvest in public health, Sadly, that doesn't fit with the ideological approach adopted, with the result that we have a failed system and £ billions wasted.

Richard Carter ● 1288d

Advice from the Simpsons that's doing the rounds on LinkedIn ...

Michael Ixer ● 1289d

I see that Sky News have announced China is to test nine million people in just five days after 12 new cases in Qingdao city.On the other otherside I read a while ago that Sweden were going to let infected people do their own track and trace. Apparently it what they do for STD's in Sweden. Perhaps they have not considered super spreaders or maybe they have?

Ed Robinson ● 1289d

The numbers attached to these contracts entered into with no tender are eye watering at least!SERCO's T&T is not working and has cost billions!

Ivonne Holliday ● 1289d

Here's one of them:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53672841And I suppose they will want to sell them to the NHS next, and to hear the PM putting "NHS" in front of something that quite obviously isn't is pretty pathetic.

Philippa Bond ● 1289d

It appears some MPs from opposition parties are seeking a judicial review into the awarding of these contracts:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/11/mps-launch-legal-action-against-uk-government-over-covid-contracts?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_OtherMy understanding was that although the Talk Talk customer data loss hit the headlines (and was unforgivable as the unpatched vulnerability was "documented" on the dark web for ant script kiddy to find and exploit) it was lax management of an subcontractor in India where some staff stealing details of customers' support records led to customers being defrauded by spoof support calls.

Michael Ixer ● 1289d

Bearing in mind how well the distribution of this years flu vaccine is going i'm not getting my hopes up of a successful covid vaccine roll out...

Matt Palmer ● 1289d

Where are the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee when you need them?  Who will hold this government to account at this most difficult of times?Our T&T system, fully outsourced, is costing £12bn and still doesn’t work. Ireland’s cost less than £1mn and does work - fortunately also in Northern Ireland. The Tax Payers Alliance, a supposedly non-partisan think tank which campaigns for lower taxes, has been very quiet on these huge pandemic expenditures.  Why?

Jonathan Callaway ● 1289d

The T&T scheme is a particular scandal, and so are the PPE acquisition rackets: a paper in the BMJ in July (since when, more billions have been fed to greedy and incompetent private firms) said this:"The UK government has spent £10bn on its much derided covid-19 test and trace programme and £15bn on personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare staff, the Treasury disclosed this week. It revealed the figures in a document summarising the substantial financial commitments made by the government in response to covid-19."https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2805It's shocking that so much money has been given to private companies without proper tendering processes being followed; the BMA has listed some of them:"DHL, Unipart and Movianto to procure, manage logistics of and store PPE (personal protective equipment); Deloitte to manage the logistics of national drive-in testing centres and super-labs; Serco to run the contact tracing programme; Palantir and Faculty A.I. to build the COVID-19 datastore and Capita to onboard returning health workers in England."https://www.bma.org.uk/news-and-opinion/outsourced-and-undermined-the-covid-19-windfall-for-private-providersThe result is the appalling mess that is our "world-beating" test and trace programme, that's being run by someone whose only visible achievements are riding a horse and running Talk Talk when it allowed the personal data of almost 160,000 customers, including names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers to be stolen - oh, and to have married a Tory MP.

Richard Carter ● 1289d

Not well at all!I cannot help this, I am sorry!  But at least the MPs will get a pay rise the NHS staff could not....

Ivonne Holliday ● 1289d