Wales to spend extra £50m on contact tracing

Welsh Health Minister Vaughan Gething has announced an extra £50 million of government funding to allow health boards to extend contact tracing over the summer.

The additional funding, on top of £10 million previously agreed, will keep the current contact tracing workforce until the end of September 2021. The model for contact tracing will continue to be reviewed over the course of 2021.

Additionally, people who are close contacts of someone who has tested positive and have been asked to isolate by contact tracers will now be offered a coronavirus test. Close contacts will be asked to take a test as they start their self-isolation period and again on day eight.

As of the end of February, contact tracers in Wales have reached 167,226 (99.6 per cent) positive cases who were eligible for follow-up, together with 382,494 (95 per cent) of their close contacts and advised people whether or not they need to self-isolate.

Gething said: “Although new case numbers have responded well to the current lockdown restrictions, there are significant uncertainties around the trajectory of the pandemic which means it is highly likely we will need to maintain a substantial contact tracing operation for the foreseeable future. Even with the roll-out of the vaccination programme, testing and tracing will remain a vital part of our approach as lockdown restrictions ease and to tackle any new variants as people arrive from overseas.”