Wiltshire’s health boss says the county will be part of a pilot scheme surveying Covid-19 outbreaks across venues. 

This new surveillance tracing will look at venues and settings rather than tracking individuals and offers a more enhanced level of contact tracing. 

The scheme will be piloted in partnership with Public Health England, the Field Epidemiology Service and Swindon Borough Council. 

The scheme would use information from the national Test & Trace system to identify those places where there are clusters of positive Covid-19 cases cropping up to help those businesses or settings.   

Director of public health in Wiltshire, Kate Blackburn said: “I think it’s a mechanism of testing out whether we were aware of those venues anyway – which in a majority of cases we are and already dealing with them. 

“It just gives an enhanced level of contact tracing. So really trying to do preventative, proactive work.

“It’s about trying to identify places where you see more people testing positive or more cases associated with a setting or venue so we can send in environmental health officers or our public health team just to make sure there isn’t something that has been missed.” 

Mrs Blackburn said Wiltshire businesses have been fantastic but that there were always opportunities to make things safer. 

However, Mrs Blackburn admitted the finer details were still being ironed out, as specific resources and staff the scheme would need to redeploy. 

If the scheme is successful in Swindon and Wiltshire it would be rolled out across the country. 

More information is promised as it is made available to the public health team.