WALES’ Test, Trace, Protect service, which has helped cut the spread of Covid-19, will be extended to next year, with a further injection of Welsh Government funding.

Another £32m will be invested to extend contact tracing to March 2022.

The latest figures show that almost a year after TTP was launched in Wales, contact tracers have reached 99.7 per cent of the positive cases eligible for follow-up.

They successfully contacted almost 95 per cent of close contacts eligible for follow-up, and provided advice or helped resolve their cases.

Councils have also approved more than 12,500 self-isolation support payments to help people to stay at home and reduce the risk of coronavirus spreading in their communities.

“Test, Trace, Protect has been extremely effective at supporting people who have tested positive and their contacts to isolate and providing advice, guidance and support,” said health minister Eluned Morgan.

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“It’s a year since we set up Test, Trace, Protect from scratch, at what the Auditor General for Wales described as an extraordinary scale and at pace. A great deal of hard work across NHS Wales, local authorities, the voluntary sector and partner organisations has created a highly-effective programme to help keep Wales safe. Everyone involved can be extremely proud.

“I want to thank everyone involved, including Public Health Wales and Digital Health Care Wales.

“In particular I want to thank the contact tracers and those providing Protect services, who have provided much-needed support to people at an extremely difficult time in their lives.

“They have done much more than their title suggests. They have identified vulnerable people and got them extra support, whether it be someone to chat to, a food parcel, or linking with vital mental health services.

“As we seek to stop the spread of new variants of concern, experienced contact tracers are key to doing this effectively and we continue to invest in this work.”

Research suggests that when Covid-19 transmission was high before last autumn’s firebreak, TTP reduced the R number from approximately 1.7 to 1.3.

Using the more recent R number and improvements to monitoring, its impact may be to reduce R from 1.3 to 0.8.

Contact tracers and advisers working for the TTP service are undertaking enhanced contact tracing to tackle variants of concern.