Scots avoid ‘pingdemic’ owing to less sensitive app

SCOTLAND is escaping a “pingdemic” because its contact tracing app is less sophisticated than England’s and does not order people to self-isolate based on an algorithm, experts believe.

Despite a significant number of virus cases over recent weeks in Scotland, only a tiny number of people have been “pinged” in comparison to England and Wales, where the NHS app uses a complex matrix to calculate risk of exposure to Covid-19.

In Scotland, the cruder technology defines a close contact as someone who the app believes has been within 2m of a Covid-positive person for 15 minutes or more.

However, in England, a range of factors including distance, infectiousness and length of exposure are taken into account in deciding whether someone will be “pinged” or not.

Since its launch in September, just 59,022 people have been told to self isolate by Scotland’s app. Meanwhile, new figures released yesterday showed that 618,903 alerts were sent out in England and Wales in the week to July 14 alone.

Taking differences in population size into account, this means almost as many people were pinged in a single week south of the border than have been during the whole pandemic in Scotland. “The English app is more complex, it’s probably a wee bit more sensitive as well,” said Greig Paul, of the department of electronic and electrical engineering at the University of Strathclyde.

“The key difference is the Scottish one says ‘were you approximately within 2m for 15 minutes?’ If yes, ping, if no, no ping. The English app can catch situations the Scottish app would miss.”

Figures from Downing Street suggest one third of “pinged” people go on to develop symptoms of Covid-19.

He added: “Far fewer people are getting pinged in Scotland, but there are still significant numbers testing positive. So the Scottish one doesn’t seem to be yielding the same rate.”

However, despite Scotland escaping the pingdemic, there are concerns that the cross-border differences have exposed deficiencies in the technology, despite Nicola Sturgeon insisting the app is working well.

It is also estimated that as many as half of the two million people who downloaded the Scottish app are no longer using it.

Alex Cole-hamilton, health spokesman for the Scottish Lib Dems, said: “The fact that the Scottish app seems to be less sophisticated than its UK counterpart, raises questions about whether cases have been missed.”