Policy paper

Workplace daily contact testing pilot

Published 13 August 2021

Introduction

An initial pilot of workplace daily contact testing was introduced in December 2020. At that time, modelling considered by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) suggested that daily contact testing, as an alternative to self-isolation, could be effective at averting transmission by contacts of a positive case.

However, the spread of the Alpha variant, with its higher transmissibility and secondary attack rate, potentially affected the balance between the risks and benefits of daily contact testing. Two randomised controlled independent research studies were therefore initiated to provide further evidence of the impact daily contact testing could have on public health. These allow comparison of onwards transmission between those participating in daily contact testing and those self-isolating. One of the trials involves the general public and the other secondary schools and colleges.

The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O) released a statement on daily contact testing on 3 March 2021. Across all analyses, daily contact testing demonstrated potential to detect more asymptomatic contacts and in reducing the growth rate of the epidemic.

In addition to the clinical trials, those organisations already participating in the workplace pilot were offered the opportunity to continue with daily contact testing. This was on the condition that they agreed to support the development of a minimum viable service, which would be developed in parallel to the clinical trials, with the aim of expediting the launch of the service if the evidence from the trials supported this.

How organisations were selected for participation

The basis for selecting organisations for the workplace daily contact testing pilot was that they had an asymptomatic testing site in their workplace and had responded positively to an invitation to express an interest in joining the pilot. The selected workplaces gave a spread of different types of organisation to help generate a range of learning about the operational implications of running daily contact testing. Some public sector organisations have since been added to the scheme to broaden further the spread of organisation types.

What participation entailed

In organisations that participated in the pilot, instead of self-isolating at home, contacts of positive COVID-19 cases were given the opportunity to take lateral flow device tests every day for up to 7 consecutive days. They were then able to attend work in the 24 hours following a negative test result, provided they did not have symptoms. If they tested positive, they would cease daily testing and have to self-isolate for the next 10 days. Participation was voluntary – an individual could choose to self-isolate for the full period rather than take lateral flow device tests.

Organisations

The organisations with sites approved for the daily contact testing workplace pilot were:

• AB Foods Silver Spoon

• Agrial Fresh Produce

• Apetito

• Barts Health NHS Trust

• Border Force

• British Steel

• Cabinet Office

• Co-op – Castlewood

• Danish Crown Pork

• Greencore

• Heathrow Airport

• Jaguar Land Rover

• John Lewis

• Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• London Ambulance Service NHS Trust

• Longley Farm

• Moy Park

• Network Rail

• Northumbria Water

• Oxford Biomedica

• Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• Pilgrim’s

• Primula (Kavli)

• Royal Free Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

• South Wales Police (overseen by Welsh government)

• Tata Steel

• Transport for London

Key learnings

The pilot provided evidence addressing a range of themes, for example:

• participating organisations’ experiences of setting up and managing daily contact testing

• people’s reasons for choosing whether or not to participate

• participants’ experiences of daily contact testing

• the benefits and disbenefits of daily contact testing for participating organisations

• operational learning for subsequent roll-out

Daily contact testing in places of work has since been scaled up to support critical workforces, with rollout to an initial 2,000 sites in August.