Plans for tracing apps meet setbacks
Tech part of strategy to fight spread of virus
LONDON — Doubts were growing on Thursday over whether plans by European governments to use contact-tracing apps to fight the spread of the coronavirus will be able to be implemented with any real effectiveness soon.
In contrast, there appeared to be some movement forward in the sprint to find a vaccine against COVID-19, bolstered by a $1 billion investment from the United States.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged Wednesday to have a “test, track and trace” program for COVID-19 in place by June 1 as part of a strategy to persuade the country that it’s 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 program.
Security minister James Brokenshire told the BBC on Thursday that he remains “confident” that the tracing system will 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 midmay.
The French government also has been forced to delay deployment of its planned contact-tracing app. Initially expected last week as the country started lifting confinement measures, it won’t be ready before next month.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said Thursday that the country’s contact-tracing app would start tests “in the coming days.”
But he made no mention of whether Italy had hired teams of contact-tracers to conduct interviews and get in touch with people who had been in contact with COVID-19 patients.
The adoption of a European Bluetooth-based app has taken a back seat to the hiring of old-school human tracers in Spain.
The government has said that the technology will be adopted only if it adds value to the tracing efforts that are being deployed by the country’s 17 regional administrations.
In other developments:
Drugmaker Astrazeneca said Thursday it has secured the first agreements for 400 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine that is being tested at the University of Oxford, one of the most advanced projects in the search for a vaccine.
The Anglo-swedish company reported it had received more than $1 billion from the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority for the development, production and delivery of the vaccine, starting this fall.
In China, the country’s communist leadership was taking precautions to prevent any infections as it opens its National People’s Congress on Friday and a parallel meeting of advisers on Thursday. The meetings in Beijing were delayed for nearly two months because of the pandemic.
The coronavirus has infected more than 10,000 health care workers in hard-hit Iran, news outlets reported Thursday, as health officials in war-ravaged Yemen and Gaza expressed concern about waves of new cases.