Damehood for head of chaos-hit Covid testing system in New Year Honours list

[dutchman]

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, is honoured as coronavirus test supply issues cause staff shortages



The head of NHS Test and Trace has been made a dame, despite ongoing coronavirus testing chaos which is threatening the new year return to work, as well as the start of the new school term.

Dr Jenny Harries receives a damehood for services to health in the New Year Honours list.

Supply of test kits remained “patchy” on Friday, according to pharmacists, leading to NHS staff and other key workers being absent, because they have been unable to provide a negative test.

The problem in obtaining tests threatens to disrupt the new school term, which begins on Tuesday. Business leaders said workers are also needlessly self-isolating because they cannot access the test to release system, making for an effective new year lockdown.

Some care homes have had to close to visitors because of staff absences caused in part by a lack of tests. Rail firm Southern has also cancelled all services to London Victoria until January 10 because of staff shortages.

The NHS' Covid testing programme has been the subject of repeated criticism.

Most recently, the UKHSA has been accused of failing to order extra tests or increase domestic production in advance of changes in government policy, which have driven a surge in demand.

Covid sufferers can now end self-isolation after just a week if they test negative on two successive days. Close contacts of Covid sufferers are also strongly advised to take a lateral flow test every day for a week, rather than self-isolating.

With the omicron variant driving up infections to record levels, the demand for tests has now outstripped supply.

In December, The Telegraph identified Dame Jenny - who earns more than £140,000 - as the source of a contested claim by Sajid Javid that omicron patients experience a 17-day lag between becoming infected and requiring hospitalisation. The Office for National Statistics put the delay at 10 days.

In October, the Commons public accounts committee published a report describing the £37 billion Test and Trace programme as “muddled, overstated and eye-wateringly expensive”. It said it had “not achieved its main objective” of breaking chains of transmission and getting the country back to a more normal way of life, although Dame Jenny has not been in charge of Test and Trace for the entirety of its existence.

In the same month, Test and Trace was forced to suspend processing of PCR tests at a laboratory in Wolverhampton after up to 43,000 people were given false negative results.

In the summer, Test and Trace was blamed for the so-called “pingdemic” in which up to 600,000 people a week were being told to self-isolate by an automated contact tracing app, which was criticised for being too sensitive.

[rebbonk]

The woman doesn't know her ar$e from her elbow and is not fit to hold office, never mind being deserving of an award,