The national rollout of a phone app for the government’s test and track response to coronavirus appears to be delayed until June, after No 10 said it would only happen “in the coming weeks”.
Amid wider confusion about how well the project is operating, Boris Johnson’s spokesman said it was possible for the test and track system to work without the app, and for the lockdown to be relaxed further without the system operating at all.
The NHS-designed app, along with a planned contingent of 18,000 contact tracers, is seen as key to plans to ease restrictions by alerting authorities to any localised outbreaks of Covid-19 and allowing them to be tackled.
The app is being tested on the Isle of Wight. Last week the health secretary, Matt Hancock, said the trial was going well and that the national rollout would happen “in mid-May”.
Asked about the trial, the prime minister’s spokesman gave a longer timetable. “The pilot is ongoing in the Isle of Wight,” he said. “The residents have been hugely supportive, with around 60,000 downloads on the island. Their feedback is vital in helping us to look at how the app is being used and how it can work with testing and contact tracing. And it remains our aim to roll out the app across the country in the coming weeks.”
Asked about the apparent change in the timeframe, the spokesman said the only commitment for mid-May had been to recruit the 18,000 contact tracers, which the government was “very confident” of reaching.
“It is possible to do track and trace work separately to the app, and that’s obviously something that happened previously. And it’s perfectly possible to do that again,” the spokesman said when asked whether the system was dependent on the app.
He also indicated it was possible for the second phase of relaxing the lockdown, during which some schools and shops would open, could happen without the track and trace system operational.
Asked whether this was necessary, the spokesman said: “What we have said in relation to step two is that we will only move forwards if it is safe to do so, and that we will need to look at the five tests, which the government has in place, and we will need to study carefully both the R rate and the rate of new infections.”
R is the number of people each infected person passes the virus on to, and needs to be kept below one in order to control the spread of the virus.
On Sunday, it emerged that one of the private-sector companies handling the recruitment for trackers had sent emails that said the process was on hold while the government considered an alternative app.
The Department of Health and Social Care said the email was “wrong and could cause confusion”, and recruitment for both the online and phone-based contact-tracing service was continuing “at pace”.
Askedwhether the NHS app was working, Johnson’s spokesman said: “We are closely studying the first phase of the rollout and expect to be able to improve the app based on user feedback from the Isle of Wight. As with any tech project of this size, you’d expect us to keep all options under review to make sure the app is as effective as possible.”