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Boris Johnson has promised a coronavirus test, track and trace programme will be in place by June 1.
Speaking during PMQs on Wednesday, the prime minister said the government will have recruited 25,000 staff capable of tracing the contacts of up to 10,000 new Covid-19 cases a day.
The pledge came after Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, said the absence of an “effective” system for the last ten weeks had left a “huge hole in our defences” against the disease.
Contact tracing was effectively abandoned on 12 March when the government moved from its strategy of trying to contain the virus to delaying its spread.
Angela McLean, the deputy chief scientific adviser, yesterday warned the lockdown should not be eased until the new system was in place.
Johnson told MPs: “We have growing confidence that we will have a test, track and trace operation that will be world-beating and yes, it will be in place, it will be in place by June 1.
“There will be 25,000 trackers, they will be able to cope with 10,000 new cases a day.”
The PM added: “And to understand the importance of that statistic, I should just remind him that today the new cases stand at 2,400.”
Johnson also accused Starmer of adopting a “negative tone” in his questions.
But Starmer hit back: “34,000 deaths is negative. Of course I am going to ask about that. And quite right too.
“For ten weeks there has has been no tracing. Unlike Germany and South Korea, and tracing is critical.”
Test, track and trace means testing people for coronavirus, tracking the spread of the virus, then tracing the people an infected person has come into contact with.
People on the Isle of Wight are at the forefront of part of the new UK operation, after being involved in a pilot scheme to download a contact tracing app developed by NHSx, the health service’s digital technology arm.
Separate contact tracing will run alongside the app. While the app works automatically, an army of human contact tracers is being recruited to manually gather information about the places infected people have visited and others they have been in contact with to get a detailed picture of who might be at risk of infection.
Earlier today Serco, the private company responsible for recruiting and training contact tracers, was forced to apologise after accidentally sharing the personal email addresses of almost 300 people involved in the scheme.