A GROUP of friends who had been out drinking with two people infected with coronavirus were not contacted by national tracers, St Helens’ director of public health has revealed.
Local tracers discovered the blunder after re-treading the footsteps of the national test and trace service.
St Helens saw a spike in coronavirus cases last week, with three cases linked to the Gerard Arms pub in Denton’s Green.
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The pub shut up shop on Monday, August 3, to carry out an extensive clean, after a member of staff tested positive for coronavirus.
Public health chiefs have now confirmed that two people who had been drinking at the pub on various days in the week leading up to its closure also tested positive for Covid-19 after becoming symptomatic.
There is no evidence or suggestion that the cases are in any way linked to the member of staff who tested positive, or that the Gerard was any less Covid-secure than other pubs in St Helens.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service has learnt that the two pub-goers were contacted by the national test and trace service using the details they had provided to the pub.
However, they were not asked key questions about where they had been or who they had been with in the days leading up to testing positive for Covid-19.
“Those questions hadn’t all been asked,” said Sue Forster, the director of public health for St Helens Borough Council.
“The thing is, what the national test and trace service has is an automated web system and then a call handler will contact you.
“So I think it’s only as good as the web-based system and as good as the person putting the information in there.
“So if they’ve not thought to put contacts over and above their family contacts, their household contacts, and maybe their workplace, then they won’t have thought to consider all those wider friendship group that they’ve been in contact with.
“As it happened, every single one of them was self-isolating, so actually they were doing all the right things.”
The NHS Test and Trace service also failed to quickly notify the local authority about the cases linked to the Gerard.
Ms Forster revealed her team actually found out about it through the media and through local councillors.
The information finally filtered through from the national test and trace service two days later.
Ms Forster said: “If you saw what happened in St Helens last week, it spiked really quick so actually two days is a long time in a spike.
“We need to get hold of that really a lot faster.
“I think there is something about, in some faraway place, it’s really difficult to understand the local dynamics, the local issues.”
Cllr Anthony Burns, cabinet member for public health, leisure, libraries, arts and heritage, added: “People are used to things happening very quickly, with social media, etc.
“We found out by a couple of councillors and by reading it in the Star, that it happened at the Gerard. I was contacted by loads of people straight away that had been in there.
“I think, although it’s very difficult to trace, I do think communication wise, nationally, they could have been a little bit better and a little bit quicker to deal with it, to get a message out there because people were worried.”
Notifications of any complex cases, such as those linked to hospitality, care homes and schools, workplaces, should come through The Mersey Hub.
But Ms Forster said even they are not getting that intelligence through fast enough.
She said a system has been set up within St Helens to react to complex cases, but said they should not be relying on local intelligence.
Ms Forster said: “We need to work through this system, very quickly to get it working smarter because in some of our data it shows that only 50 per cent of the contacts have been contacted.
“And they’ve been failed.”
Following the intervention of the local tracers, Ms Forster said that everybody who had been at the Gerard who needed to be notified was notified, via a text.
A spokesman for Greene King, the brewer that owns the Gerard Arms, said it has “fully cooperated” with the local authority and NHS Test and Trace by sharing the relevant information requested to support the contact tracing process.
The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said NHS Test and Trace is working closely with local authorities.
A DHSC spokesman said: “Every day local authorities get test, case and contact tracing data, with further data shared with local directors of public health, to help control and manage outbreaks in their area.
“This includes sex, age, ethnicity, occupation, test type, test date, test location, linkage to care homes and postcode information for positive cases.
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“This means that thanks to NHS Test and Trace local teams can visit people on the ground – a vital part of the contact tracing process.
“Without this localised data being shared by NHS Test and Trace, it would have not been possible to take the targeted action we have seen in places like Blackburn or Leicester.
“We are also rolling out more dedicated ring-fenced teams of contact tracers, who are trained health professionals, to work intensively with health protection teams on a local area and recruiting more people to work in local public health teams too.”
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