THE CORONAVIRUS test and trace system was branded a “complete shambles” on the first day of its launch as trained contact tracers claim they can’t log in – and didn’t know they would be starting today.
Tracers have said it is “the blind leading the blind” and they don’t have anyone who tested positive for coronavirus to call so they can get to work.
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A huge number of tracers said they had not been sent login details which allowed them to access systems to start work and were instead sat at home with nothing to do.
They were left feeling “incredibly frustrated” at wanting to help fight the deadly disease but instead had no work to do.
Boris Johnson announced yesterday England’s test and trace system would roar to life today – meaning anyone who gets symptoms will be directed to take a test and isolate at home.
Trained contact tracers then get in touch with the infected person so anyone who came into contact with them over the last 48 hours can also be told to self isolate for 14 days.
Close contact is defined as within two metres for more than 15 minutes.
Tracers said the initial training they had received was a “joke”.
It came amid reports the website crashed yesterday morning and as NHS chiefs warned key bits of the system were not yet operational.
Baroness Dido Harding, the chairwoman of NHS Test and Trace, said earlier in the week that the 25,000 contact tracers were ready to start work.
She said it was a number “easily enough” to trace the current levels of new virus cases.
One tracer told The Sun the system is not ready to go live – and they only found out today would be their first day on the job by watching the daily press briefing.
All systems don’t-go
They said: “We only found out it was going live today by watching the TV yesterday.
“It wasn’t communicated to us. We got an email at 9.48pm yesterday saying we would be going live at 8am.
“We also got sent a video from Matt Hancock last night and that’s it.”
They said there have been repeated IT and organisational failure.
They said: “I sent an email at 8.14am that I couldn’t log on and all I got was an automatic reply saying they hope to reply within three working days but because of the volume of calls they may not be able to.
“It’s obviously a big effort to get us organised which I appreciate, and it’s a very complicated thing to get right, but it hasn’t been very elegantly put together.”
“It is definitely live, they can say it is live but it’s not live and kicking.”
So far the tracer has not be able to get in contact with any of the 2,013 people who tested positive yesterday because the system won’t let them.
They said: “How it should work is Synergy (the online system) should give you record eg. John Smith and a phone number. You should go through script with him and input the answers on the gov.uk bit.
“When I log on to synergy I get a message saying ‘No Available records for you’.”
The tracer said team leaders – who were supposed to be helping guide the new employees – were clueless about how to get started.
‘Blind leading the blind’
The tracer said: “We are Tier 2 tracers and we are meant to have a team leader and we have Ring Central to call team leaders but when we call it says ‘The destination you have dialled is disabled’.
“So the the only way to contact someone is to wait on hold for 30 minutes for someone in IT who also doesn’t know what is going on.
“Also, we thought team leaders would be PHE people but one of our colleagues has been made a team leader and she also doesn’t know what she is doing – so it is the blind leading the blind.
“All the while we are getting paid for this. It’s a lot of money.”
Another contact tracer added they were told the system was likely to go live on Monday, June 1 – the original date the PM said the programme would be live by.
‘Complete shambles’
Another tracer said: “It’s been a complete shambles.
“I’m employed to be a caller by Sitel and it was confirmed a few weeks ago I would be employed but only this week did we begin training.
“Our first day wasn’t fully explanatory. It was basically Youtube videos and explanations about what coronavirus was.
“I was told when I joined I would have all the login details needed to be able to get on the system. Yet I’m sat here on the day it’s launched with nothing to do because I’ve still not been sent them.
“I think there’s thousands of us in the same boat. We had more training on Wednesday and only one person out of my group of 30 had been sent them. Everybody is saying the same thing.
The UK Contact Tracing and Advisory Service told workers they are aware there is a problem with logging into the website and have reported the problem as a “critical incident”.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said last night there were bound to be “bumps in the road” but that the system was ready to go live.
He laughed at Sky News presenter Kay Burley this morning when she asked him if he had brought the system in sooner to distract from the row over Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham.
He said: “It’s priceless Kay I’m normally accused of delaying these things and bringing them in too slowly.
“I committed to getting the system in in mid-May. You can’t accuse me both of rushing it and delaying it,” Mr Hancock said as he laughed loudly.
Ms Burley scolded him, saying: “I suppose many of my viewers will think it’s not a laughing matter”
He responded: “I can’t quite work out whether you’re telling me if we’ve gone too slow or too fast I think we’ve got it just right.”
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