Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have been contacted under the NHS covid-19 test and trace service; and how many of those people were approached by (a) Public Health England and (b) Serco employees.

Since the launch of NHS Test and Trace on 28 May 2020:

- 29,962 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and been transferred for contact tracing, have been reached and asked to provide details of their recent close contacts; and

- a total of 169,546 close contacts have been reached and asked to self-isolate.

Of those close contacts reached and asked to self-isolate:

- 37,468 were non-complex close contacts; and

- 132,078 were complex close contacts.

People who test positive for COVID-19 are contacted by NHS Test and Trace by text message, email or phone using health professionals recruited by NHS Professionals (Tier 2) and asked to provide details of their close recent contacts.

People identified as contacts who are non-complex cases are contacted by text message, email or phone using call handlers employed by Serco and SITEL (Tier 3). Complex cases are followed up by local health protection teams, overseen by Public Health England (PHE) (Tier 1).

An escalation process exists where cases can be referred to Tier 1 (PHE) for more specialist handling, where more tailored advice is given by public health experts, including those working locally in health protection teams. It is possible that a person identified as a close contact may have had their case escalated to Tier 1 and therefore handled by both Serco/SITEL and PHE.