We are calling on the London Boroughs of Newham, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge, to begin work immediately on setting up local test-isolate-care-trace systems to help contain the coronavirus in our communities.

We are making this call in full knowledge that four of our boroughs are in the top six for Covid-19 deaths per 100k of population. Newham, with 144 deaths per 100k has the highest death rate in the country.

We recognise that councils cannot immediately solve the deprivation, over-crowding, unsafe working conditions and ill health that are fuelling local deaths, particularly in our Black and Asian communities.

However, we insist that our councils stand by our communities and use their public health and other resources to set up local test-isolate-care-trace systems, as soon they can.

We have little confidence in the Government’s delayed contact tracing scheme – especially as public health experts fear it is too centralised and set to by-pass essential local knowledge.

We believe councils acting NOW can help to slow the progress of the virus across NE London and save lives.

We therefore ask our councils to build on their existing pandemic flu plans by:

1. Bringing together experts in public health and primary care to plan viable, transparent, test-isolate-care-trace systems in each of the NE London boroughs
2. Fully involving primary, secondary and social care, including the 111 service
3. Making good use of existing NHS and town hall contact tracers and people in the local community
4. Using clinical case detection and not just relying on the chaotic, centrally organised systems for Covid-19 testing
5. Building genuinely local data to contribute to two-way data sharing with any future systems organised centrally –which should also feed into general practice records