App to ease lockdown ‘a few weeks away’
A SMARTPHONE app designed to help contain the spread of Covid-19 when lockdown measures are eased is “two to three weeks” away from being rolled out, MPs have heard.
Matthew Gould, chief executive of NHSX, the health service’s digital innovation arm, told the Science and Technology Committee the voluntary tool would be trialled in a “small area” shortly to help gauge its success.
He said: “We are, I hope, on course to have the app ready for when it will be needed, for the moment when the country looks to have the tools to come out of lockdown safely.
“We are going as fast as we can, we have teams of people looking at it 24/7.”
But Mr Gould admitted regret after the committee heard work to develop the app did not start until March 7, two weeks before lockdown measures were introduced.
The app will work by using a smartphone’s Bluetooth technology to keep an anonymous record of other smartphone users they come into close proximity with.
The user will then have the option to send data to the app if they begin to show signs of having coronavirus – or being found to have tested positive for Covid-19 – which will then send a notification to others who have been in close contact with the phone user.
Australia is one of several countries to have rolled out a similar app, with millions of people downloading it.
Professor Christophe Fraser, senior group leader in pathogen dynamics at University of Oxford Big Data Institute, told the committee that widespread uptake would likely keep the reproduction rate – seen as crucial for easing lockdown measures – low.
Prof Fraser said: “In scenarios that are relatively pessimistic, we found that if roughly 60% of the population use the app, it would be enough to bring the reproduction number below one and control the epidemic.”
Mr Gould said it would be
“tough” to get 80% of smartphone users to install the app, but said encouraging people to do so needed to become part of the Government’s “core message” in limiting the spread of the virus.
He said: “The message needs to be: if you want to keep your family and yourselves safe, if you want to protect the NHS and stop it being overwhelmed and at the same time we want to get the country back and get the economy moving, the app is going to be an essential part of the strategy for doing that.”
He said developers were working with the Information Commissioner’s Office to make sure the app was compliant with data protection laws, but said phone users could be “confident” their personal data would not be compromised, nor would it be shared with the private sector.