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Ministers look set to miss another Covid-19 target as just 1,500 contact tracers have been hired out of a pledged 18,000.
Health secretary Matt Hancock had said he would recruit an “army” of 18,000 tracers, to track the people coronavirus sufferers have had contact with, by “mid May”.
But, speaking on Friday, Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis said just 15,000 have come forward so far and “earlier in the week” just 1,500 of that number had actually been hired.
It means the government has just 8% of the tracers it says it needs in place.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “I don’t think we’ve got to 18,000 just yet, I think there’s about 15,000 applications, we’re looking to as you say get up to 18,000.”
Pushed again on how many had been appointed, he added: “As of this morning I’m not sure of exactly how many of the 15,000 have been hired. Earlier in the week it was about 1,500. It would have gone up since then.”
A functional test, track and trace operation is viewed as key to protecting the UK from a second peak of the disease.
Hancock has already faced sharp criticism for repeatedly failing to meet the 100,000 tests-a-day target he set himself.
The daily figure for tests has been frequently under 100,000 since April 30 – the target deadline day – and on even that date the government faced claims the total was artificially inflated by including the number of home test kits sent out, as opposed to completed.
On Thursday, ministers said 126,064 tests had been carried out on Wednesday, the highest number to date but only the third time in May that the number has gone above 100,000.
It comes as Boris Johnson begins to ease the lockdown, asking people who cannot work remotely to return to the workplace.
Labour’s Rachel Reeves, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, has meanwhile written to Michael Gove asking why the government has not committed to hiring 50,000 tracers, which many experts believe are needed to run an effective tracking strategy.