To ask the Minister of Health what lessons have been learned from contact tracing for the Novel Coronavirus that can be applied to restricting the spread of monkeypox.

Contact tracing is an established part of the public health response to the management and control of communicable diseases and is part of the wider Public Health Agency (PHA) Health Protection function.

The Contact Tracing Service that was established in response to COVID-19 was on a much larger scale than would be required as part of a public health response to the management and control of other communicable diseases including the recently identified Monkeypox virus.

There are however a number of relevant lessons learnt from the approach to contact tracing deployed during the pandemic that are being appropriately considered and applied, where required, to the restricting of the spread of Monkeypox. These include the flexing of the contact tracing staff resource in response to variations in positive case numbers; and, the optimisation of digital solutions for accessing and tracing positive cases and their contacts.