When NHS Test and Trace Goes Wrong

A Lockdown Sceptics reader has written to tell us about an unfortunate experience she had with NHS Test and Trace when her deceased husband tested positive for Covid.

On March 17th, my partner died suddenly and unexpectedly. We are still waiting to find out the cause of death, but early indications are some sort of heart problem which no one knew about. Naturally this has been a shock to all of us.

A few days after the event, I received a phone call from a young lady representing NHS Test and Trace who told me that I had been identified as a contact of someone who had tested positive for COVID-19 and that I needed to self-isolate for 10 days. She named my partner as the contact. When I asked where the information had come from, she didn’t know how his name had got onto the database and when I explained that he had died, she didn’t know that either. I know that he had never had a COVID-19 test as he worked from home, so I can only assume that the test was carried out post mortem.

The young lady was very apologetic and embarrassed and, to her credit, didn’t press me further about matters. I really don’t want to blame her for doing her job, but you’d think a bit of context might be helpful for people doing this job.

Inevitably, COVID-19 has been mentioned as a contributing factor on the preliminary report. We won’t know any more now until after Easter, but we owe it to him to find out what took him from us. Whatever it was, he didn’t die of COVID-19 and I find it highly unlikely that he even had it, given that I have to be tested when I go to work (only occasional work and no positive tests to date) and he hadn’t been anywhere. Despite our scepticism, we have kept to the guidance, mainly because all of our hobbies which took us out of the house to meet others have been on pause for the past year. He was a lockdown sceptic from the get-go, and I know he would be incandescent that his death would be recorded as a COVID-19 statistic. I do, however, regard his death as a casualty of lockdown. Perhaps the post mortem will tell us that he had a condition which would have taken him from us sooner than expected, but this wicked and pointless lockdown policy stole the last year of his life and deprived him of the things which gave him so much pleasure in life.

I am beyond angry about how our media and political classes have treated us and so disappointed by the way the people of this country have colluded with them through complacency. Thank you for all the work you do in exposing this dreadful state of affairs.