THREE months too late, we finally have a rapidly thrown-together test and trace procedure.

Suspected symptoms, we call NHS 119 when then we will be told we need a test. That means getting to the nearest drive-in test centre but then, with symptoms, we should not be driving. And if you don’t have a car you cannot use a bus or a taxi. In all these cases the one option is you ask for a do-it-yourself test kit.

For elderly people and so many this, then, presents all manner of problems. Not least having to get the test package to post office for posting. And this with more delays.

And in all this what then do we say when we are asked who in recent weeks have we been in close contact with?

Are we going to take responsibility for people being told to isolate and in that lose their livelihood for their family for two weeks? And in cases where we as the reporter end up not having the virus?

We are, are we not, turned into informers, with huge responsibilities as to the consequences of the information we give to an unproven automated script driven tracking system?

I can only say it horrifies me. And all the more deeply tragic when there has been a clear and evident solution to this air borne infection from day one. We should all, when in shops and on public transport, be wearing respirator masks (it is a respiratory disease) rated FF2 or better FF3. Not near useless face coverings.

That is why the Far East has done so well and why the UK has the highest pro-rata death rate in the world. Massive failure of UK government on all counts. Ramshackle, far too late app-driven tracing system when for three months we should all have been wearing quality respirator masks.

JEFF WILLIAMS

Jubilee Road, Parkstone

More bad language

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY concur with Colin Moorcroft’s condemnation (‘Footway folly’, Letters, Daily Echo, May 25) of the increasingly common use of the absurd word “footway”, and his suggestion that it must be the creation of “some jobsworth in a department somewhere”.

But there is, unfortunately, nothing new about this nonsensical and unnecessary replacement of perfectly good English words and expressions – most notably when (driven, I’m sure by a misguided desire to ape our friends across the big pond) “personnel” and “staff” were replaced by the hideous “human resources”.

And I still remember receiving, a couple of years before I retired from the travel industry in 2018, a notification from a leading tour operator, that concluded with request that the information therein be “cascaded” to all employees. Grrrr!

Cascaded for God’s sake? What’s wrong with “passed on”?

I came to the conclusion some time ago that this nonsense does indeed emanate from empty-headed jobsworths who have far too little to do.

According to the old adage, “necessity is the mother of invention”. In these cases it is more a matter of inventing a necessity!

ROBERT READMAN

Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth

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