Times piece on it Millions of people are unable to use the government’s flagship coronavirus tracing app after five key flaws emerged within days of its launch.The NHS Covid-19 app was finally made available for download on Thursday, five months after its creation was announced by Matt Hancock, the health secretary. He had previously insisted the app would be a vital tool in defeating Covid-19, boasting it would “hunt down and isolate the virus so it’s unable to reproduce”. Almost £11m was spent on an earlier version abandoned in June.Yet the new app has already received a flood of complaints from frustrated users and a series of failings is severely limiting its effectiveness.Last week the chief executive of the company that developed the new app described it as “rock solid”. Baroness Dido Harding, chair of NHS Test and Trace which is responsible for the app and who was appointed by Hancock, promised the app would “help us to reach more people quickly in their communities to prevent further spread of the virus”.But yesterday it emerged tests taken as a result of the Office for National Statistics surveys, and all those taken via the NHS or Public Health England, cannot be shared on the app.
It is not clear how many test results would be affected by this but some experts fear it could mean as many as a third or up to half of all tests could be incompatible with the new app.On Friday, the day after the app launched, more than 96,000 people tested in England were unable to enter their results. As a result, thousands of other people who had been in close proximity to those with positive results will never be notified.The NHS Test and Trace website said: “If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they’re positive or negative. We are working to make this available as soon as possible.”Technology expert Benedict Evans branded the app for England and Wales a “shambles”. “A contact tracing app is based on people with a positive test entering that into the app. But the English app that just launched is incompatible with tests done by the NHS.” Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have already introduced their own individual contact tracing apps, which users can switch to should they visit either country.SPONSORED
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Evans added: “We’re six months into this and the UK still doesn’t have a unified test result system.”Jon Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said the situation “beggars belief”, adding: “How can this app be effective if someone is unable to link up their tests carried out by the NHS or tests carried out for surveillance?He said: “This weekend ministers have thrown cash at promoting this app across local and national newspapers, they need to outline on Monday how they will quickly fix this flaw.”The latest version was piloted among residents of both areas as well as NHS volunteers from mid-August, after the first app was marred by technical issues and eventually scrapped.But people who test negative for
coronavirus are also unable to share the result with the new app if they did not book the test through it in the first place. It asks for a code to register a test result but a code is only received if the test is positive.The flaw means that all those who tell the app that they have symptoms without entering a result find a self-isolation countdown begins even if they have tested negative.
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Deborah Ryan, professor of design history at the University of Portsmouth who appears in the popular BBC2 series A House Through Time, said she was “surprised” to find she couldn’t enter her negative test result. “Apparently the only way I can stop the app continuing to tell me to self-isolate is if I delete it,” she added.
Millions of users are unable to download the app in the first place because of the age of their phone.
Apple iPhones need to be running the iOS 13.5 version of the firm’s software, released last year but available to devices several years older, while users of Google’s Android require version 6.0, which was rolled out in 2015. The government believes that about 13% of smartphone owners in England and Wales have non-compatible technology. Many of these will be older people, who are less likely to have the latest technology but among the most at risk of coronavirus in society.
A fourth flaw uncovered by users yesterday found that people living several miles away from the Welsh border in England are wrongly being referred to Welsh Covid-19 guidelines. Some of the instructions were also sent to them in Welsh.
There was also concern among NHS and social care staff since bringing their phone to their workplace could result in them erroneously being marked as “exposed” on the app despite wearing personal protection equipment. The Department for Health and Social Care said staff in such a situation should pause the contact tracing feature. But there were fears pausing it for a 12-hour shift could mean the app misses infected people that are not patients who staff come into contact with.
Concerns have also been raised that one in three people told to isolate will be a false positive, meaning the app reported wrongly that they were 2m or less from an infected person for 15 minutes or more.
The app is powered by an Apple and Google-developed system, using Bluetooth to keep an anonymous log of people a user has been close to. It does this by exchanging randomised keys while the Bluetooth signal strength measures proximity.
If someone falls ill, they should be able to tell the app, which will then ping their keys to a central server and in turn send them off to all app users in search of a match. Should the system determine a person as a close contact, they will be automatically sent a notification and issued with further guidance.
Zuhlke Engineering was awarded more than £5m across two contracts for development of the app. The company’s chief executive, Wolfgang Emmerich, said developers would continue to improve it over the next six months.
Hancock said the “vast majority” of people had the right smartphone software to download the app, but added that some may need to upgrade their phone’s operating systems. He said: “The more people who download this app, the more effective it will be.”
The Department of Health and Social Care said: “We are urgently working to enable positive tests for people who aren’t already given a code to be added to the COVID-19 App.
“NHS Test and Trace will continue to contact people by text, email or phone if your test is positive advising you to self-isolate and for those who don’t have a code, the contact tracers will shortly be able to provide codes to insert in the app.
“If you book your test via the app the results will be automatically recorded in the app and the isolation countdown will be updated.”
but for the effort involved on my part I’m in 
