SOUTHEND and Thurrock Councils received incomplete Covid test data from England's Test and Trace system - which was partly responsible for a surge in the Indian variant.

The BBC reports that failures in England's Test and Trace system are partly responsible for a surge in the Indian variant in one of the worst affected parts of the country.

The BBC has seen a report stating that for three weeks in April and May, eight local authorities in England did not have access to the full data on positive tests in their area.

This included Southend Council and Thurrock Council in Essex.

The number of missing cases was highest in Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire.

The other areas experiencing incomplete data were Blackpool, York, Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, and North Somerset.

A recent surge in infections there has been linked to the Indian variant.

The news comes as Southend Council announced it was closing two rapid Covid test centre sites at Belfairs Methodist Church and Twenty Two on Pier Approach.

The council has urged everyone to self-test twice a week even if they have had both Covid vaccine jabs.

The government said a Track and Trace "software issue" had affected a "handful" of places, but this had been resolved "as quickly as possible".

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: "NHS Test and Trace has contacted over ten million people since the start of the pandemic, and this has had a significant impact, breaking chains of transmission and reducing the spread of the virus.

"Over the past month, we have contacted over 150,000 people to tell them to self-isolate.

"Due to a software issue, there was a delay in tracing contacts of a number of cases. This only affected a handful of local authorities and the issue was resolved as quickly as possible."

Krishna Ramkhelawon, director for public health in Southend, said: “Although there was a delay in receiving some data, we can confirm that none of the delayed information related to these cases were a variant of concern.

“We have been responding to three suspected and one confirmed cases of the Indian variant in Southend through working closely with Public Health England and our own local tracing service. These people have been self-isolating and our contact tracing have concluded that these have all been contained.

“We are awaiting confirmation from the genome sequencing for the three suspected cases, and there is no further action that local people need to take, other than to continue following the usual public health measures in place.

“Whilst there is no immediate action required by members of the public and this should not cause alarm, it is a good reminder that the virus is still with us and so we continue to ask people not to drop their guard, to get tested regularly, get vaccinated and continue to practice good public health measures to help prevent the spread of Coronavirus.”