Health secretary is self isolating having been told by track and trace

This is awful news . You know what is coming next ? We must download it to ensure we get out of this ASAP. Damn you Hancock 

I genuinely thought that they had stopped doing track and trace due to a combination of the massive number of infected people in circulation and the low accuracy of the system

Wouldn't it make sense to vaccinate the cabinet?  I know labour would screech about selfishness etc but it makes no sense for the team of people in charge of our country having to time out periodically because they've been near a hospital or something. 

Surely the track and trace system becomes totally useless once you get above a few thousand positive tests a day, and particularly useless when in lockdown?

It seems that when there are very few cases (like between May and August last year), the call centres have nothing to do, but when you get above a few thousand positive results, and you are back in lockdown, there is no point in tracing contacts. No one is (supposed to be) going out, and getting individual workplaces to shutdown/isolate is more effective than having a call centre trace contacts.

Of course, the outsourcing company will get paid whatever happens.