The NHS Test and Trace situation is now quite farcical (UK Covid testing system has ‘huge problems’, admits Boris Johnson, 16 September).

It is silly to put so much emphasis on a test. Most infected people are asymptomatic, can’t or won’t get tested, or give a false negative result. The current test-and-trace system will not control outbreaks.

We need a broader concept of diagnosis by trained professionals. Testing is part of diagnosis, not a replacement. Risk factors and key symptoms can be immediately assessed by phone. Advice can be given immediately and then modified when and if lab tests become available. Community and individual factors can be assessed. Contacts could be traced early if appropriate. This works well in Germany now.

We must move power, information and resources to local public health services and our brilliant GPs. We need to see the massive investment in private services for the huge mistake it has turned out to be.
Dr Bing Jones
Sheffield Community Contact Tracers

• After reading Aditya Chakrabortty’s article (England’s test and trace is a fiasco because the public sector has been utterly sidelined, 17 September) my gloom continues. With Covid cases doubling each week, the time for the government’s test, track and trace system is past. The numbers are too great, and while “a matter of weeks” seems good enough for Matt Hancock, it is not for the population. The system needs to be augmented now. When numbers were small during summer, there was an opportunity to make the resources we had work for us. Local public health departments and laboratories should have been key in this. Not to have used these tried-and-tested services is unforgivable.
Andrew Bates
Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear

• I welcome Aditya Chakrabortty’s piece on the grotesque failures of the outsourced testing regime. But how many people realise that this and a lot of other so-called NHS work is not done by the NHS at all? Why isn’t Labour highlighting this? The NHS logo is all over it, so the NHS will be blamed for the failure, and this will be another way for the Tories to claim that the NHS “isn’t working”.
Michael Sibly
Charlbury, Oxfordshire

• As a visitor to and volunteer at the care home where my husband is a resident with late-stage Alzheimer’s, I’ve been tested, along with all staff members, for Covid-19 weekly from the end of August. The first results came through in 48 hours, the second in 72 hours, the third in nine days. When the manager tried to find out why the results of the third test were taking so long to come back, she was told that the whole batch of tests for her staff had been sent to Italy. I’ve been tested again, but there is little point in testing if results are so slow to come back. It seems the only thing world-beating about this government is lying and dangerous incompetence.
Ann Jolly
Emsworth, Hampshire

• Boris Johnson is forever telling us how great the British public are and how wonderfully we have sacrificed during the pandemic. Let me offer a little evidence to set against his false praise. As I write this, I am taking my first long-distance train journey in seven months, from Yorkshire to London. There are now 12 passengers in my compartment; only two are wearing face masks. Many are also mingling, against the clear labelling on each seat. I naively assumed they would be admonished by the train crew, but not a bit of it. No surprise, then, that the virus is back – an ignorant public, led by a mendacious government. Covid likes it here.
Ian Richardson
Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire

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