England’s test and detection system will not prevent further attack of coronavirus without radical improvements in the spring, experts have said, as concerns about the use of call center staff are growing inexperienced to perform the role of clinically trained staff.
The government’s £ 22bn program is under increasing pressure as it seeks to reach almost three times the number of people with a disease and more than double the number of people close to it. hand compared to a month ago.
There is growing concern among test-and-find healthcare professionals about the deployment of outsourced call center staff, often employed on the lowest wages by retail companies under the Serco contract, which has been drafted in to conduct in-depth interviews with coronavirus patients.
Previously, the staff of this call center were concerned for the relatively simple place of telling people closely related to people with a disease to separate themselves. From October, however, many were brought in to interview Covid-19 patients, detailing their movements and finding out who might be on them – complex work previously only performed by qualified health care staff.
One clinical employee, who has been working for trial and error since its launch in May last year, said he was deceived by using completely unqualified young workers to work so sensitively with people who are very ill and often vulnerable. Call center staff have previously said they felt unprepared for the job.
In an email to Matt Hancock last week, the health professional said he had reported call center staff, known as level 3 staff, several times to NHS Professionals, the organization who employ temporary staff for the NHS, because of “required or inappropriate actions”. He said many of these issues could have serious consequences.
He wrote to the health secretary: “Life and death is an unused term, but in dealing with Covid’s issues, it is true. As a matter of urgency I will request all levels 3 [workers] be withdrawn from stage 2 clinical work. ”
The healthcare worker, who has more than 40 years of experience in infectious diseases and environmental health, said he had raised concerns again about young phone handlers delaying unnecessary calls to Covid-19 patients because they needed an interpreter, falsely stating that they tried to contact people, and rescheduling calls for 24 hours afterwards saying “was the case too busy to talk ”or“ dinner was the deal ”.
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) has stated that 80% of an infected person’s close contact must be told to separate themselves within 48 to 72 hours for the national program to be effective, so there is a risk any delay in allowing the infection to spread. .
The latest figures show that the proportion of infectious people tested and detected fell to its lowest level since the end of October (84.9%) as demand for the system fell. going up in December. The number of people infected within 24 hours fell to its lowest level since mid-November (73%).
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said the department was relieving health care workers by increasing responsibilities for privately employed telephone handlers and did not provide clinical advice.
He said: “NHS testing and detection – the largest test system in Europe – is doing everything possible to break distribution chains and, to date, the service has told more than 5.1 million people to separate them, including those who test positive and so close. calls. ”
But NHS sources said the new model increased the pressure on experienced clinicians – those working in phase 1 on trial and detection – which they said lacked questions from call handlers. without a certificate.
There are also concerns that the program is making staff in some hospitals emergency by ordering physicians to separate themselves unnecessarily when they have been in close contact with someone. the disease. “It takes people out of work when they don’t have to and staff reductions are the biggest risk for transmission,” said a senior doctor at the hospital.
Experts said they feared a lack of a long-term strategy to control Covid-19 once the 14 million most vulnerable people have been vaccinated by the government’s central target. February.
One communications regulator said the government needed to give more support to people who needed to be lonely, improving compliance with the rules. He said, of 259 calls he made to Covid-19 cases in November and December, 56% did not respond (144).
Research suggests that less than 20% of those who should be lonely do so altogether. The ability to self-report is three times lower in those earning less than £ 20,000 a year or having less than £ 100 in savings.
Deepti Gurdasani, senior lecturer in epidemiology and statistical genetics at Queen Mary University in London, said the government needs to put in place a long-term strategy for the introduction of Covid-19 later in the spring, including an improved test, detection and isolation system.
“I do not understand what the government’s plan is,” she said. “We were told that we had a global test, detection and loneliness test – that the virus was not completely successful and that we have a second and now third compliance. ”
Susan Michie, a member of the Sage Pandemic Scientific Group on Behavioral Science, Sage subcommittee, said: “Experimentation, discovery and loneliness have been one of the major failures of this government over 2020.”
Michie, a professor of health psychology at University College London, urged ministers to learn from successful testing systems, overseas detection and loneliness and to build a precise, local system with healthcare professionals.
“This has to be done by people who are not only skilled but trusted in the communities – it has to be done locally,” she said.