Europe is still waiting on contact-tracing apps
DOUBTS ARE growing over whether plans by European governments to use contact-tracing apps to fight the spread of coronavirus will be able to be implemented with any real effectiveness soon.
In contrast, there appears to be some movement in the race to find a vaccine against Covid-19, bolstered by a one billion dollar investment from the US vaccine agency.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged on Wednesday to have a “test, track and trace” programme for Covid-19 in place in Britain by June 1 as part of a strategy to persuade the country that it is safe to move on to the next stage of easing the lockdown and restarting the economy.
But the Government also appeared to backtrack on an earlier pledge to make a smartphone app a pillar of that programme.
Security minister James Brokenshire told the BBC yesterday he remained confident the tracing system would be in place by June 1 but acknowledged that an app intended to help track the virus was not ready. He suggested technical issues were the reason for its failure to be introduced as planned by mid-May.
Experts say being able to quickly identify people exposed to the virus can help stop the spread of the contagious respiratory illness but efforts to put apps in place have come up across technical problems and fears of privacy intrusion.
The French government has also been forced to delay deployment of its planned contact-tracing app. Initially expected last week as the country started lifting confinement measures, it will not be ready before next month due to technical issues and concerns over privacy.
Italian premier Giuseppe Conte said his country’s contact-tracing app would begin tests “in the coming days”, while Spain’s economy minister, Nadia Calvino, said on Wednesday in parliament that Spain was making preparations to test a European Bluetoothbased app at the end of June in the Canary Islands.