Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the process will be for the implementation of manual track and trace for covid-19.

Public Health England leads the delivery of public health contact tracing activities working closely with local government and key national partners, such as the NHS Business Services Authority and NHS Professionals.

The process of public health contact tracing for COVID-19 includes a web-based service where people list their contacts and the places they have visited. This helps contact tracers to collect data quickly and decide on the best way to follow up with these contacts. For those people who are not able to use the web-based service or where the situation is more complex, phone-based contact tracing is undertaken. Calls are carried out by either health professionals or specially trained call handlers depending on their complexity, with local health protection experts continuing to lead the investigation and control of more complex cases and situations.