Officials slow to act on contact-tracing warnings, UK Covid inquiry told

Leaked evidence shows trail of missed opportunities to improve test-and-trace regime in early days of pandemic

Public health leaders were slow to act on repeated warnings over Christmas 2020 that contact tracing and isolation should be triggered immediately after a positive lateral flow test result, leaked evidence to the Covid inquiry shows.

A scathing lessons learned" document written by Dr Achim Wolf, a senior test and trace official, and submitted to the inquiry, gives his account of a trail of missed opportunities to improve the NHS test-and-trace regime in the first winter and spring of the pandemic - before vaccines were available.