Get the NHS Covid- 19 app, turn the tide
More than 16 million people have already downloaded the NHS Covid- 19 app – So play your part and help save lives…
professor of pathogen dynamics, Nuffield Dept of Medicine, University of Oxford
The NHS Covid- 19 app was launched last month, and by downloading it millions of people are already doing their bit to control the virus. Here Christophe Fraser, professor of pathogen dynamics at the Nuffield Dept of Medicine, University of Oxford, answers your questions about privacy, quarantine and more.
should I download the app?
useful in terms of being able to scan a QR code when you go to a venue – you’ll be among the first to get a notification if there’s been an outbreak in one of the places you’ve been. If you’re unfortunate enough that one of the people you’ve been in close contact with in the past few days is diagnosed with Covid, you’ll get a notification straightaway so you have the opportunity to avoid infecting others, including loved ones and vulnerable people. If you’re experiencing symptoms ( fever, loss of smell or taste or continuous cough), you can also order a test through the app.
at home because you don’t want to infect vulnerable people. We all have loved ones with other illnesses that make them even more susceptible to very bad outcomes from Covid and, although it’s much rarer, we’ve also seen bad outcomes among some younger people.
No. The app doesn’t use GPS at all and the only information on location you give is the first part of your postcode. It doesn’t track your location at all. Information about the contacts you’ve made and the places you’ve been stays on your phone, and it’s all about your being able to get notification of exposure to help you manage your risk.
QWill it sell my data to advertisers?
Absolutely not. The data about the contacts is entirely private, you have complete control over it and you can turn contact tracing on and off. It’s private information that stays on your phone.
Can I enter my test result in there, even if I didn’t order it through the app?
Whichever way you got tested, you can enter the information into the app, but if you ordered a test through the app the result gets through more quickly to speed up contact tracing. Speed is really important, because one of the things we’ve learnt about Covid is that it transmits pretty quickly and you start being infectious for a couple of days before you develop symptoms and on the day when you first get symptoms. I know that the testing has been stretched, but if you have symptoms it’s essential to get tested and it’s not the time to go out.
Q I’m not sure if I can be bothered to install it. Will it really make a difference?
A
We will make a difference. We’ve done modelling and looked at the data. We can see some countries that managed to turn the tide on the epidemic and our team all agree that the more people who download it, the more we can add to the control effort. If more of us do it, the more able we will be to turn the tide.
We need some sense of solidarity and to support people who are isolating and quarantining, because it’s important
Q
that schools and universities stay open, and we want people to be able to fully get back to the pubs, restaurants and theatres. That can’t happen if the virus is out of control.
We’re all frustrated. The important thing to remember is that as scientists we’re also humans and we want to be able to hang out with our friends, celebrate birthdays and go out. It is a hard time, but it can be done. Look around the world – once we get control of the virus we’ll all be better off and it’s good for our livelihoods too.
So if we use the app, does this mean we won’t have to go back into full lockdown for months again?
That’s exactly what we’re trying to do. The more we can stay in well ventilated areas, wear face coverings and wash hands, the less likely we are to end up in full lockdown. You don’t need to look at the national numbers; you can just think if you, your friends and your colleagues use the app, you’ve got an early warning system: here comes the virus.
rule out that possibility,” he says. “Given that the universe is so vast and that the building blocks of life – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and so on – are among the most common elements in it, the odds would seem to favour the notion that life elsewhere is not just a possibility but an inevitability.
“Elsewhere in the universe there could well be civilisations which are millions of years older than ours. Perhaps they will have evolved way past all the squabbles and the appetite for war that human beings can be so locked up in.
“Who knows – maybe these alien creatures would watch us with fascination? Maybe they would look at us in the same way as David Attenborough looks at penguins?”
A few weeks ago the news there might be living organisms floating in the clouds of Venus sent shockwaves around the world. Astronomers detected phosphine – on Earth associated with microbes living in the guts of animals or in oxygen- poor environments such as swamps – without being able to explain how it came to be there.
Culshaw suggests, only slightly tongue- in- cheek, that aliens might want to wait for signs of intelligent life on Earth before making contact.
“Just as human beings s would approach a wasp’s nest est with a certain amount of caution, I’m sure that any intelligent ligent alien race will think, ‘ OK, , if we were just talking to, say, David Attenborough or Professor r Brian Cox, we might be all right. But the collective response of human beings en masse is a little unpredictable. Let’s just leave them for a couple of hundred years and see what they’re like then. Then maybe they can join the interplanetary community’.”
He has a number of favourite incidents from the annals of UFO history.
One is the account of Betty and Barney Hill, an American couple who came to believe they had been
SEEING DOUBLE: Culshaw imitates his idol Sir Patrick abducted by aliens in 1961. “That was a very intriguing case,” he says.
“They didn’t want any notoriety or publicity – they were just an ordinary couple trying to live their lives. Under hypnosis, Betty was able to recall a star map she had supposedly been shown by one of the occupants of the craft, which showed a group of stars, one of which was the sun of our solar system and there were dotted lines to other stars.”
He is also fascinated by what is
STARRY EYED: Culshaw has been hooked on astronomy since childhood now known as “the Robert Taylor Incident”, in which a Scottish forester had a frightening experience in West Lothian in 1979. “This chap was walking h his dog when he encounte tered a strange craft which see seemed to send instruments tow towards him which knocked him over and ripped his clothe clothes,” says Culshaw. “The police i investigated the area and there was some very strange physical eviden evidence left behind.”
His favo favourite page in UFOs is one showing w what the home planet of a type of alien seen by farmers in Kentucky in 1955 – known colloquially as the “Hopkinsville goblin” – might look like.
“It describes the gravity, light, the atmosphere and so on,” he says. “One of the things I love about this book is the fact that it had a tone of scientific plausibility. It credits its young readers with a sense of inquisitiveness and intelligence.” The the
Hopkinsville Goblin page is the direct ancestor of Culshaw’s Exoplanets Excursions column, about the conditions on far- off planets, for The Sky At Night magazine.
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