Practices and local partnerships should get a share of the millions allocated to England’s “failing” test and trace system, a group of doctors say today.

The budgets for the widely criticised service should go to local services, including primary care, local NHS laboratories and local public health services, the experts write in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Primary care and public health departments would better manage services to meet the needs in response to the pandemic and local lockdown rules.

The case is made by leading GP Dr Margaret McCartney, from Glasgow, Professor Allyson Pollock, from Newcastle University and Dr Louisa Harding-Edgar, from Glasgow University. They criticise the UK government of a “key failure” in trying to set up a national system for testing, using private companies, and removing it from local services. This overlooked the importance of clinical input, clinical oversight and integration and statutory duties to notify infectious diseases, they said. They highlight the benefits of professional clinicians, such as GPs and practice nurses, discussing test results with patients and explaining their true significance.

Dr McCartney said: “Reintegrating testing into clinical care and public health services, rather than handing contracts to commercial companies, would ensure that the complexity of testing and interpreting test results was acknowledged and accounted for in the diagnosis and reporting of cases.”

Dr Harding-Edgar said: “Because the current PCR COVID test is not a test of infectiousness or current infection, it cannot distinguish between those who have the virus and are or are not infectious, and those who have remnants of the virus from previous infection or contamination and are not infectious. Clinical interpretation is therefore important for advice and diagnosis.”