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Thread on the need for a refresh of test, trace, isolate & support - in debate about national test & trace vs local we need to focus on what actually matters which is not the % of people who are contacted in x days but how many people who need to actually isolate? 1/
While the key performance indicators of reach and time have improved that basic fact of numbers isolating is nowhere near where it needs to be & as incidence of Covid comes down this is ever more important - basically the policy isn’t working but it can be fixed 2/
We must deal with individual compensation - if I need to isolate its a pain but of no real consequence, I’m paid the same to stay at home - millions though are asked to isolate & take a financial hit which impacts on rent, bills etc - this is wrong & bad public health policy 3/
The impact of this is that some people do not engage with the whole system in the first place and many don’t isolate when they should but we’re asking them to make an impossibly hard decision that no policymakers are faced with themselves 4/
Next is contact tracing which isn’t a technical exercise just informing people what they need to do -but a challenging public service asking people to take a series of steps on the basis of trust which may come with significant financial, practical & psychological challenge 5/
We need to shift our model to an isolation support service building connection with our residents, explaining why this is so important, understanding if they have barriers to isolate and if they do helping to tackle them drawing on the resources of local gov & community 6/
We also need to engage with employers and employment rights - our research in @NewhamLondon showed how many people fear losing jobs if they isolate - employers need to be accountable to supporting their staff to do the right thing & people need better info on their rights too 7/
We need to get this right now - our ability to return to the kind of life we all want is contingent on this system working much better than it is now - but there are some pretty fixable issues here (some more challenging ones too) & it’s not too late to get this right 8/
