Speaking at the weekly Greater Manchester Covid response meeting Andy Burnham stressed the importance of a strong local contact tracing system for the region to succeed moving forward.
The Mayor for Greater Manchester highlighted two areas of particular importance for the localised test and trace system.
The first is the complex or high risk cases which effect the most vulnerable. He used examples of homeless shelters, care homes and prison probation centres. The second area was the primary cases, cases that the national system could not reach within 24 hours.
The hope is that the tracing system will cover the gaps in the national system from last year, which will also be aided by the impact of the vaccine. Burnham highlighted the point that last year the tasing system face a ‘rising tide’ of cases and was overwhelmed.
Now with the trend of infections going down, the vaccine roll out and learning from mistakes made last year will be a factors in making the system more effective.
Also speaking at the briefing was Richard Leese who said that the after rising the rate of infection has been falling slowly for three weeks.
Greater Manchester Police dealt with 550 cases relating to COVID-19 over the weekend which is slightly lower than has been experienced recently. There were no large parties that GMP, Bev Hughes said that the fact penalties for gatherings over 15 people had been made stricter contributed to this.
