Before the PM’s announcement on Monday, we were guessing what the announcement would mean for contract tracing.
On Thursday our central government data source (used to download positive test data) was turned off – and just like that contact tracing came to an end.
We had a discussion with our colleagues in Public Health at the end of the week to confirm how we will decommission our Liberty Create contact tracing solution – ensuring that it remains available should we need it again in the future (for COVID19 or any other pandemic).
The teams remain focussed on outbreak management – which is also supported by Liberty Create. However, the way the team identifies outbreaks has changed. Previously outbreaks were identified by contact tracing. Now we will rely on organisations informing us of an outbreak, this will be done via a Liberty Create form which we are currently developing with the service.
Our Public Health Team held a reflection & celebration event to acknowledge the efforts within Cumbria.
The ever-changing situation and the Digital Teams continuous improvement approach was acknowledged with an amusing poll:
We will leave you with a quote from the event.
For context back in June 2020 our Director of Public Health, Colin Cox said ‘We are building the plane while trying to fly it’… speaking about how we were building our contact tracing team alongside developing our Liberty Create solution.
‘We have not only built the plane, but we now have our own airline’