Contact tracing in England by June

England’s testing and tracing system will be up and running by 1 June, Boris Johnson has promised, with 25,000 staff in place by the earliest possible date earmarked for the gradual reopening of schools and shops.

Mr Johnson said the system would be capable of tracking the contacts of up to 10,000 new Covid-19 cases a day.

At Prime Minister’s Questions Mr Johnson said: “We’re making fast progress in testing and tracing and I have great confidence that by 1 June we will have a system that will enable us, that will help us very greatly to defeat this disease and move the country forward.”

It means that the UK government’s contact tracing infrastructure, which had been expected to be in place before the Scottish Government’s system, is now on schedule to be rolled out at the same time.

The capacity to trace the contacts of 10,000 people far exceeds current levels of confirmed Covid-19 cases across the UK. Widespread contact tracing was abandoned in mid-march as the number of UK cases soared.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said last week that the contact tracing app would be rolled out across England from mid-may but that has now been pushed back.

Downing Street later confirmed that the app would be rolled out “in the coming weeks” – after human contact tracing.

Ministers are facing pressure from councils and teaching unions to reconsider plans to reopen English primary schools, but the UK government denied that contact tracing had to be in place for schools to open safely.

Meanwhile outsourcing giant Serco, which is responsible for recruiting and training contact tracers in England, was forced to apologise after accidentally sharing the personal email addresses of almost 300 people.