Sheffield City Council has become one of the first in the UK to bring track and trace efforts under public ownership.<\/p>\n
The move is part of a wider nationwide scheme called \u2018Local-0\u2019 that is aiming to encourage local authorities to tackle tracking and tracing coronavirus cases locally.<\/p>\n
Alex Westeran, Operations Manager at Sheffield City Council said: \u201cOur main approach is that everybody receives the support when they are told to self-isolate, but we want to make sure that people can do that when asked to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unlike previous track and trace operations, the council is hoping it can plug into the social care sector with its existing links and make contacting cases more efficient.<\/p>\n
The new approach will increase the capacity to contact up to 140 people per day, according to Westeran\u2019s estimates.<\/p>\n
It follows criticism over the government\u2019s handling of track and trace and the lack of control local authorities had been given to handle local outbreaks.<\/p>\n
Private providers like Serco have also come under scrutiny for running a centralised system that left councils out of the mix.<\/p>\n
Pascale Robinson, Campaign Officer at We Own It said: \u201cWe are ecstatic that Sheffield is taking on local tracing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely vital that local teams are leading on this because Serco and other providers have shown time and time again that they can\u2019t support people and trace contacts.\u201d<\/p>\n
We Own It has been campaigning for coronavirus tracing programmes across the country to be brought under public ownership and be run locally for months.<\/p>\n
Previous polling by the group found that up to 40% of people were not willing to share their contact information with a private company because of safety fears.<\/p>\n
It is hoped other regions and local authorities will now sign up for the Local-0 scheme as vaccination efforts ramp up and restrictions are eased.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sheffield City Council has become one of the first in the UK to bring track and trace efforts under public ownership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[705,189,15,38,141,131],"class_list":["post-37160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-story","tag-705","tag-council","tag-news","tag-sheffield","tag-sheffield-city-council","tag-south-yorkshire"],"yoast_head":"\n