Back in March, the World Health Organization stressed the importance of a well-managed contact- tracing system for containing and suppressing outbreaks of Covid-19. Despite having a functioning localised system for managing disease outbreaks, the government decided to build a new national system for England.
The Guardian’s Josh Halliday tells Rachel Humphreys that there have been failures with the government’s commissioned smartphone app and the companies responsible for staffing contact-tracing call centres are reaching far fewer people than is needed.