CONTACT tracing for the coronavirus in Scotland is reaching more people than the equivalent system in England, Scottish Government sources have said.
Detailed data for the Test and Protect service is not due to be published until the end of the month.
However, it is understood to be running ahead of the Test and Trace system used by NHS England, which contacts around 80 per cent of people who test positive, and then around three-quarters of their close contacts.
Between May 26, when Test and Protect began in Scotland, and August 9, there have been 2,225 index cases, generating 5,512 contacts.
There are currently 673 contact tracers drawn from health boards, with spare capacity that can be quickly deployed in case of a Covid spike.
A key factor in the superior performance of the Scottish system is that “human calls” are used for every initial contact, rather than text alerts.
“A person speaks to you if you are contacted, you do not just get a text message that says ‘You’ve been in touch with a positive case, you have to self-isolate for 14 days’,” a source said.
“You are spoken to by a trained individual from a Scottish health board.”
The Scottish Government is also working on a smartphone proximity app, to help identify contacts between strangers, in time for a possible second wave in the winter.
The insights emerged as the Government came under fire from one of Scotland’s leading public health experts about the lack of official data on Test and Protect.
Professor Linda Bauld, of Edinburgh University, said the proportion of contacts being reached by the system should be public to show if it was working or not.
Ms Bauld said the data, which was supposed to be ready by the return of schools this week but is now not expected until the end of the month, was the “missing piece in the jigsaw”.
She told Radio Scotland the country would be living with Test and Protect “for many months” and it was vital to know if it was up to scratch.
She said: “All we have at the moment is the number of people who have been tested and then the number of people who are contacts.
“We don’t know the proportion that have been followed up, how long it is taking to do that, though we’ve heard the First Minister give some examples, and then we don’t know what happens to those people who are followed up and we need to be able to see all those data to be confident that the system is working as it should be.”
Ms Bauld, chairwoman of public health at the Usher Institute, said such data was “very variable”, with up to 20 people traced per Covid case in other countries, whereas only three people have been traced on average in Scotland.
In the case of the recent Aberdeen outbreak, it has been around five contacts per case.
Ms Bauld said Scotland had otherwise done “extremely well” on publishing its pandemic data.
Shadow health secretary Donald Cameron said: “It is not acceptable that Scotland’s public health experts have to practically beg the SNP to provide the necessary data.
“Tackling this virus requires an honest, open approach.
“We will only stop the spread of Covid with every expert at Scotland’s disposal working together using all the available information.
“We can’t have a situation where public health experts are forced to cobble together what they can from limited data.
“This is more evidence of a troubling pattern of behaviour from the SNP on transparency. We have seen a similar approach over the SQA grade methodology, Salmond inquiry documents, and now, worst of all, vital Test and Protect information.”
Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said the Government was working hard to ensure the efficiency of the Test and Protect system.
He told the BBC: “When that data is available, and available in a form that can be verified, then of course we would release that data.
“This Government has released data throughout this pandemic to be as transparent as possible.”
Asked why schools had re-opened without information on the proportion of contacts traced being known, he said: “We would not take any gamble or any risk when it comes to young people’s education. In fact, what we’ve said from day one is that our children’s education is a priority.”
He added: “There’s a number of harms we have to balance, a range of data we have to look at. And having looked at that data, we’re confident that schools can reopen.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “The Scottish Government is committed to setting out as much data as possible about the Covid-19 pandemic to help inform and improve our response.
“We work closely with National Records of Scotland and Public Health Scotland to ensure the figures we publish are robust, and will publish significantly more information about the contact tracing process, including the percentage of positive cases followed up, time taken to reach individuals who had tested positive and time taken to reach their contacts.
“We expect to publish this data by the end of August.
“This will be drawn from the case management system used by all territorial health boards and the National Contact Tracing Centre, and Public Health Scotland is continuing to work with CMS users across the territorial boards to improve data quality ahead of publication.”
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