UK coronavirus live: Boris Johnson defends 'world beating' test-and-trace system despite fall in contacts reached – as it happened
Latest figures show just 72% of close contacts reached; PM defends scheme; UK reports 950 new cases; Aberdeen outbreak cases increase by 25. This live blog is now closed - please follow the global live blog for the latest updates.
6.40pm BST
Thank you for following the blog and all your comments today. Here is a summary of the main developments:
5.48pm BST
There has been more reaction coming in to the latest test and trace statistics. Despite Boris Johnson's continuing to insist the system in England is world beating", the consensus is that the government must do better (see. 3.33pm).
Prof Sheila Bird, formerly programme leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
Test and trace's poor performance in reaching identified close contacts who are members of the household of a non-complex index case is extraordinary and needed explanation. Explanation [is] awaited still.
Is language a barrier or age-group (extreme youth or being very old) or illness; and why does Test and trace not enlist the help of the index case or - as recommended by the Royal Statistical Society - select a random sample of index-case households to be visited on a random day (or pair of days) during the household's quarantine for swab-testing to be offered.
Though the system has been operating for just over two months, the percentage of positive cases being contacted through contact tracing system has remained stubbornly around 80% since mid-June.
There is also a slight decline in being able to reach and isolate the contacts of those who test positive. In this sense the system for testing and tracing does not seem to be improving.
Over the nine weeks of NHS T&T activity, the percentage of non-household contacts has been increasing, indicating that the changes are likely to be as a result of the government's decision to relax lockdown measures.
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