THE NHS Test and Trace system has come under fire from Cheshire East Council leader Sam Corcoran.

The Labour councillor criticised the amount of money spent on the system — £22 billion — and how effective it has been at identifying asymptomatic cases.

His comments come as government data shows 86 per cent of contacts in Cheshire East have been successfully transferred to a contact tracing system from May 2020 to February 2021 — the same as the England average.

Cllr Corcoran, who was speaking on his Twitter feed on Thursday (March 11) said: "We know that you are most infectious just before and just after you develop symptoms so the purpose of a test-trace system should be to identify those people who are infectious, particularly those who don't know it yet, and get them to self-isolate.

"That means following up on all those people who test positive, identifying the people they have been in contact with, and making sure those contacts self-isolate.

"The national Test and Trace system has published the number of symptomatic people being tested each day — but testing symptomatic cases in itself does not achieve the objectives.

"If you have symptoms, then you should already be self-isolating, so a good test-trace system should identify people before they have symptoms."

In Cheshire East, four in five contacts identified were not managed by local teams.

This week, the House of Commons public accounts committee, a cross-party body of MPs overseeing government spending, said there was "no clear evidence" the NHS Test and Trace system contributed to a reduction in coronavirus infection levels.

In response, Interim Executive Chair of the National Institute for Health Protection Baroness Dido Harding said: "Protecting communities and saving lives is always our first priority and every pound spent is contributing towards our efforts to keep people safe — with 80 per cent of NHS Test and Trace's budget spent on buying and carrying out coronavirus tests.

"After building a testing system from scratch, we have now carried out more than 83 million coronavirus tests — more than any other comparable European country — and [on Monday] alone we conducted more than 1.5 million tests. We are now rolling out regular rapid asymptomatic testing which is supporting children to go back to school, people to go to work and visitors to see their loved ones in care homes.

"NHS Test and Trace has successfully reached 93.6 per cent of the contacts of positive cases — with 98 per cent being contacted within 24 hours, and the contact tracing service has already reached more than 9.1 million cases and contacts, making a real impact in breaking chains of transmission."