£300m TEST AND TRACE SCHEME PUTS ONUS ON COMMUNITY TO 'TRADE NATIONAL LOCKDOWN FOR INDIVIDUAL ISOLATION IF SYMPTOMS PRESENT THEMSELVES'

DESIGNED TO ENABLE VAST MAJORITY TO GET ON WITH LIVES IN A MUCH MORE NORMAL WAY WHILE REQUIRING ALL OF US TO DO OUR CIVIC DUTY

ATHERSTONE and North Warwickshire will play a vital roll in a "localised" approach to limit the spread of Covid-19 as a new £300 million test and trace is rolled out nationwide from tomorrow.

The borough authority will work with pilot leader Warwickshire County Council to help identify and contain outbreaks in places such as schools, care homes and work places.

County council leader Izzi Seccombe said the authority's record of working in partnership is "excellent" and being selected for the task was a "huge step" for the region.

The news comes as two new lab-confirmed cases of Covid-19 were recorded in the district in the last 24 hours – the official total being 189 – out of an additional 22 reported across neighbouring local authorities.

The local district had seen a sharp decline in people testing positive with only 10 cases in the last week.

People with the virus will have their contacts traced from Thursday in a bid to control its spread and help ease lockdown restrictions, the Government has announced.

NHS Test and Trace will officially launch across England with the help of 25,000 contact tracers, while an accompanying app is still delayed by several weeks.

The aim of the scheme – which will run alongside calls to keep up social distancing and handwashing – is to cut off routes of transmission for coronavirus and prevent a second peak of infection.

Councillor Seccombe said: "We are well placed to do this work – our public health colleagues bring a wealth of professional experience in testing and tracing – and our track record of working in partnership is excellent.

"Of course, this is a ringing endorsement of the quality of the health partnerships in the area and I am delighted that we have been selected as one of 11 beacon councils to lead this work.

"But what is most important is that, by leading on test and trace, our residents are benefiting hugely from the early identification and necessary action so that we can put up a real barrier against the spread of the virus and protect our residents against increased transmission.

"It is a huge step for the region."

Launching the scheme, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said: "As we move to the next stage of our fight against coronavirus, we will be able to replace national lockdowns with individual isolation and, if necessary, local action where there are outbreaks.

"NHS Test and Trace will be vital to stopping the spread of the virus. It is how we will be able to protect our friends and family from infection and protect our NHS.

"This new system will help us keep this virus under control while carefully and safely lifting the lockdown nationally."

Baroness Dido Harding, executive chairwoman of NHS Test and Trace, said: "NHS test and trace is designed to enable the vast majority of us to be able to get on with our lives in a much more normal way, but it requires all of us to do our civic duty.

"We will be trading national lockdown for individual isolation if we have symptoms.

"Instead of 60 million people being in national lockdown, a much smaller number of us will be told we need to stay at home, either for seven days if we are ill or 14 days if we have been in close contact."

How does it work?

Under the plans, anyone with coronavirus symptoms will immediately self-isolate and book a test, preferably at a testing centre or, if necessary, for delivery to their home. If the test proves negative, they do not need to do anything more. But if the test is positive, NHS contact tracers or local public health teams will call them, email or send a text asking them to share details of the people they have been in close contact with and places they have visited. The team then emails or texts those close contacts, telling them they must stay home for 14 days even if they have no symptoms, to avoid unknowingly spreading the virus. Household members do not need to isolate at this point. If the contact themselves then falls ill, they book themselves a test. If this is positive, they stay home for seven days or until their symptoms have passed, and their household stays home for 14 days. If it is negative, the contact must still complete their initial 14-day isolation period. A close contact is defined as anybody who has been in close contact with an infected person in the two days before symptoms appear and up to seven days afterwards. This includes people in the same household, those who have been within one metre, or who have been within two metres for 15 minutes or more. Baroness Harding said the Government could impose restrictions and fines on those who do not comply with the rules, but said ministers were not setting out to be punitive. She said: "I think everyone involved in it has real faith in the British public's ability to follow our guidance. "If you look at what's happened over the last two months, that's what we as a country have done. "So we're not launching this with fines and penalties for people who don't self-isolate, or who don't give us their contacts. "What we're doing is asking everyone to play their part in protecting themselves, their families, and their loved ones. "Now, the Secretary of State does have the public health legal ability to impose fines and penalties but that's not how we're launching this. "We will beat this together, rather than making it punitive." Asked if the admission by Boris Johnson's aide Dominic Cummings that he drove his family to Durham during lockdown hampered the message for people to comply with the rules, Baroness Harding said: "I'm not going to get drawn into any individual. "This is about how 60 million of us behave, not about one person. "I have great faith in the overall good nature of the great British public." Baroness Harding said 100 per cent of tests would not be returned within 24 hours from the start, "but we will get closer and closer to it with each passing day". As part of NHS Test and Trace, testing facilities may be rapidly deployed to particular locations if there is an outbreak. In the last 24 hours, Warwickshire saw a total rise of just seven to 1,444 confirmed cases, with neighbouring Leicestershire on 1,272 (up three) and Staffordshire on 2,219 (an increase of 12). The Midlands was up 98 to 25,646 while London saw an increase of 27 to 26,867 and the North West a rise of 102 to 25,260. The UK's total cases now stands at 267,240 – up 2,013. The death tally is 37,460 – a rise of 412 in the last 24 hours. But the real toll of fatalities in the UK is more than 47,000, according to the Office for National Statistics. Combined with the latest ONS stats for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it means a total of 46,383 have died across the UK. A further 964 hospital patients in England who had tested positive for Covid-19 died between May 16 and May 24 meaning that the overall UK death toll is just above 47,300. The ONS total is a third higher than the Department of Health total. This is because the ONS figures include all mentions of Covid-19 on a death certificate, including suspected cases, and are based on the date that deaths occurred. The Department of Health figures are based on when deaths were reported, and are for deaths where a person has tested positive for Covid-19. Newly-released figures put the cases of people testing positive in the North Warwickshire district at a rate at 291.4 per 100,00 population. The statistics are revealed in additional information on 'lower tier' local authorities provided by the Government via the Office for National Statistics more than 100 days since the first case of coronavirus was reported in the UK. The borough sits fourth out of nine in terms of cases per 100,000 among the neighbouring local council areas bordering Atherstone.

North Warwickshire's case rate per 100,000 population is higher than the Warwickshire figure of 252.9 and England (269.6) and the West Midlands at 282.9. The UK figure of 393.9 per 100,000 population is bumped up by a Welsh rate of 435.

Close neighbours Nuneaton and Bedworth now top the cases per 100,000 table for authorities around Atherstone's North Warwickshire borough – at 318.8. It has recorded a total of 4011 Covid cases.

With the inclusion of population, recorded cases and rate per 100,000 population, the full table of authorities which have a boundary touching North Warwickshire reads:

Nuneaton & Bedworth (pop 128,902): Cases 411 at rate of 318.8 cases per 100,000;

Solihull (population 214,909): Cases 667, at rate of 310.4 cases per 100,000;

Birmingham (pop 1.08 million): Cases 3,438 at rate of 301.2 cases per 100,000;

North Warwickshire (pop 64,850): Cases 189, at rate of 291.4 cases per 100,000;

Lichfield (pop 103,965:) Cases: 286, at rate of 275.1 cases per 100,000;

Tamworth (pop 76,678 ): Cases 181, at rate of 236.1 cases per 100,000;

Coventry (pop 325,949): Cases 808, at rate of 220.3 cases per 100,000;

Hinckley & Bosworth (pop 112,423): Cases 240, at rate of 213.5 cases per 100,000; and

North West Leicestershire (pop 102,126): Cases 153, at rate of 149.8 cases per 100,000.

Eight people in Atherstone have lost their lives to the virus, putting the town at a current rate of 75 deaths per 100,000, according to the Office for National Statistics, with only Birmingham above on 78.

The figures are relevant for coronavirus deaths between March 1 and April 17.

North Warwickshire, which finds itself surrounded by no fewer than eight other adjoining Midland authorities, has recorded 24 deaths in that timescale – with an ONS mortality rate of 35 per 100,000.

In Warwickshire, there were 397 coronavirus-related deaths up to the May 8. In this area a quarter of all deaths involved coronavirus between the end of February and May 8.

The US leads the world in the one table no one wants to head up – on 101,351 fatalities and with 1.74 million people testing positive.

While one former World Health Organisation executive said Britain could be on track to be "back to normal" by August, another current one was warning that countries could face a second peak in Covid-19 cases, even before we enter a second wave of infections.

Former director of WHO cancer programme Professor Karol Sikora said other European countries which have suffered devastating losses from the virus were leading the way by relaxing lockdown "safely".

He added: "I've always been hopeful that by the summer our situation would have dramatically improved."

But WHO emergencies programme head Mike Ryan said North America, Southeast Asia and Europe could be scaling back restrictions too quickly, which could result in a rapid acceleration in the emergence of case clusters.

He said: "We need to be also cognisant of the fact that the disease can jump up at any time.

"We cannot make assumptions that just because the disease is on the way down now that it's going to keep going down."

The death tally across the globe from coronavirus has passed the 350,000 mark – at 354,762.

More than 2.47 million have recovered worldwide out of 5.74 million recorded cases.