Untested, untraced: how three-quarters of Covid contacts slip through cracks

Statistics show how ‘world-beating’ tracing scheme fails to follow up on Covid-19 cases at every step. It was in May that Boris Johnson promised the UK would have a “world-beating” test-and-trace operation in place within weeks. “Our test-and-trace system is as good as, or better than, any other system anywhere in the world,” he doubled down in July. But nearly half a year after the system was established, thousands of Covid-19 cases still go undetected each week, leaving severe lockdown restrictions as the only option to prevent hospitals across the country from collapsing. The Guardian has analysed the latest figures on the performance of test and trace to show how people at risk of spreading the virus go missing at every step of the process.