AROUND four in 10 contacts of people testing positive for Covid-19 are still not being reached through the test-and-trace system, official figures revealed today.

Only just over 60 per cent of close contacts of those who tested positive in England were reached in the week ending November 11, according to the latest data from the Department of Health and Social Care.

It is the fifth week in a row that the figure has been just above 60 per cent.

Pascale Robinson of public services campaign group We Own It said: “The privatised national test, track and trace system is failing on all counts.

“Meanwhile, we’ve seen that contact tracing conducted by local public-health teams has been far more effective – reaching 98.9 per cent of contacts.”

Mr Robinson warned that test and trace needs a “huge reform,” starting with the government “kicking Serco and Sitel out of the system for good, and giving local public-health-protection teams the cash and access to data in order to manage track and trace far more effectively.”

A No 10 spokesman accepted that “there are still improvements to be made, and we will continue to work on it.”