People who fail to answer NHS Test and Trace calls face getting a knock on the door under a major shake-up of the privately outsourced system.
The number of national contact tracers in England will be cut from 18,000 to 12,000 in the next two weeks after the "world beating" scheme was plagued by problems.
Under the new plans, non-NHS call handlers will work alongside local public health officials in "dedicated ring-fenced teams".
If the national team can't make contact with a resident in a "set period of time", the data will then be handed over to local public health officials.