Tracking phone use to monitor second wave is backed by public
More than two thirds of the population would back the use of CCTV footage, mobile phone data and credit card records in a mass “contact tracing” exercise to prevent a second wave of coronavirus infections, according to a poll.
A survey of 2,000 people found that 72 per cent believed officials should be given sweeping access to personal data to help authorities track down individuals who have come into contact with those confirmed to have Covid-19, and ask them to self-isolate.
Using CCTV and credit card records to find those who may have been infected by confirmed cases would go significantly further than tracing methods already being advocated by figures such as Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, as an “exit strategy” from the nationwide lockdown.
Yesterday Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist who has been advising the Government, said: “We want to move to a situation where at least by the end of May, we’re able to substitute some less intensive measures, more based on technology and testing, for the complete lockdown we have now.”
The findings suggest that, for many, concerns about state intrusion are trumped by a desire to break the current impasse and prevent a second wave of infections. Last week, a poll by ORB found growing willingness among the population to sacrifice their human rights in order to help prevent the disease, with 86 per cent stating they were prepared to do so compared with 72 per cent a week earlier.
In today’s poll, carried out by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for The Sun
day Telegraph, only 12 per cent of people said that the UK Government should not be allowed to conduct contact tracing to prevent a second wave of infections, if it involved officials having access to “mobile phone data, credit-card records and security camera footage to find out who was in the same place at the same time as someone confirmed to have coronavirus”.
The Government now has access to a secure online dashboard with data provided by BT and other operators to allow officials to track population movements anonymously. The data enables location tracking of mobile phone users down to postcode level and could be used to help decide whether to loosen or tighten the lockdown. A BT spokesman said “all the appropriate individual data protections” were in place.
Writing in last week’s newspaper, Mr Hunt suggested adopting a mobile phone application used in Singapore, which allows authorities to easily contact everyone who has been near a patient who has subsequently tested positive for Covid-19, and offer a test.
The survey, carried out online on
‘A long lockdown will wipe out swathes of the economy [and have a] negative impact both financially and mentally on too many people’
Wednesday and Thursday, also found that some 45 per cent were willing to tolerate the current nationwide lockdown for “however much longer the Government deems necessary, even if it is more than two months”. However almost a fifth (19 per cent) of those polled said they would only be prepared to tolerate the current conditions, which are due to expire on April 14, for “up to a month” longer.
Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Dr Gerard Lyons, who was Boris Johnson’s economic adviser while Mayor of London, and Paul Ormerod, another leading economist, warn that a “long lockdown will wipe out large swathes of the economy” and have a “negative impact both financially and mentally on too many people”.
Their comments are borne out by a new ORB poll, which found that one in three (35 per cent) agreed that either themselves or someone in their immediate family was struggling mentally to cope with the current restrictions – increasing to nearly half (48 per cent) of 18-24 year olds. More than two in five (43 per cent) had also experienced a household decrease in income since the start of the Covid-19 crisis, rising to 53 per cent among those in London.
The poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies also found that almost half of people would be prepared to volunteer to help treat Covid-19 patients in hospitals if they received “the appropriate training and equipment”. Given the choice between agreeing that they would or would not volunteer to offer such help to the NHS, 47 per cent said they would, compared with 53 per cent who would not.
In an article for The Telegraph website, Albert Joseph, a neurology registrar on the frontline in London, calls for the Government to consider recruiting a “kind army” of civilians who would “undergo rapid preparation to treat patients on the frontline of the Covid-19 crisis and then go on to receive intermittent training to protect the nation in future pandemics and nationwide threats”.