Contact tracing for coronavirus (COVID-19) may well be one of the most complex health investigations ever. In the absence of an effective treatment or vaccine, identifying and isolating infected people is currently the only option. This still follows the same labour-intensive process as that used by Dr John Snow, one of the pioneers of epidemiology and public health.

This week saw the UK’s first local lockdown in Leicester, due to concerns over rising infection rates and increasing scrutiny of the scheme. The British Medical Association (BMA) has urged the Government to share ‘timely, comprehensive and reliable’ data to all those are involved in managing new cases at a local level.

This has provided the perfect opportunity to follow on from our webinar of Covid Conversations: contact tracing – what good looks like. We will be joined by Public Health England (PHE) colleagues to discuss their Track and Trace programme. We will also look at the governance of NHS Digital’s Test, Trace, Contain and Enable (TTCE) programme, an overview on contact tracing, the data and information flows, health protection escalations and examples from the field.

We will be joined by Janet Russell OBE, who will update us on her work developing a local government contract tracing model. She is working alongside a task group in this area for roll out across England. Janet is a government advisor and consultant as well as a trustee and board member at Safer Tourism and Chair of Yes Energy Solutions, having previously been a Director of Kirklees Council and CIEH President.