Responding to the latest figures from NHS Test and Trace, the director of policy and strategy at NHS Providers, Miriam Deakin, said:

“With the number of positive cases of COVID-19 continuing to steadily rise, we face a difficult period ahead.

“While it is encouraging to see that the number of people transferred to the contact tracing system this week has increased, we remain disappointed at the need to ‘play catch up’ as cases carried over from previous weeks are only now entering the system.

“The proportion of close contacts reached dropped below 60% this week which is also concerning. This means that over 131,000 close contacts were not reached and instructed to self-isolate in a timely manner.

“We are pleased to see some small improvements in turnaround times for pillar 2 testing, but with only 13% overall returned within 24 hours there is a long way to go.

“The recent increase in national testing capacity is welcome, but this week saw a drop of almost 50,000 people actually being tested across the country, suggesting there are still problems with access and supply.

“While we remain more hopeful as we move towards a new national lockdown to reduce the spread of the virus, this is going to be an extremely difficult winter for the NHS and will place a further burden on staff who have worked relentlessly since the start of the pandemic to care for patients.”