The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough contact tracing service launched this week.
Cambridgeshire County Council and South Cambridgeshire District Council will be working closely with NHS Test and Trace to contact people who have tested positive for Covid-19, giving them help, advice and support to self-isolate, in a further bid to crack down on the pandemic.
Both councils have staff who have undergone special training in contact tracing and who will be following up on people who have tested positive for Covid-19 but have not responded to a call or email from the national service, asking them for details of their close contacts.
Council staff will initially make contact by phone, text or email asking people to call a local number. If this fails, staff carrying local authority ID will make house to house visits to reach those people who have tested positive. They will be given advice and support on how they can stay isolated to break the chain of infection, and prevent it spreading to their household contacts. They will also be asked to share details of others they have been in contact with. Anyone who is concerned by being contacted can call the council or local community hub to check the identity of the tracer on 0345 045 5219.
We know that the quicker we can reach people who’ve tested positive and get them to isolate – and get them to share details of who they’ve been in contact with – the quicker we can break the chain of infection.
Information will be provided by the local team about the support available for those who need to isolate, including the £500 payments that are available for people who have been asked to self-isolate, where this has led to a loss of income.
How the system works
If the national NHS Test and Trace service is unable to make contact after 24 hours with anyone who tests positive, they will refer the details into our new, local Cambridgeshire contact tracing team
The local team will receive this information daily, seven days a week
The Cambridgeshire team will contact people, initially by phone/text/email, and this will show up as a local number or come from an official council email address. The person will be asked to contact a local number
If they can’t be contacted by phone/text/email after another 24 hours, we will send a council member of staff to the person’s address to speak to them personally
We will provide advice to them, get details of their ‘contacts’ and then update the national system with this information
The national process and service will then take over and contact the close contacts of the people we’ve been in contact with. The loop currently ends there for us in Cambridgeshire
When our colleagues make contact we will also see if people need any support or help – this could be financial support if people are unable to work, or support to shop for food, get medication or undertake essential household chores etc.
