Inside Politics: Coronavirus special: Matt Hancock says contact-tracing app will save lives

Sign up here to receive this daily briefing in your email inbox every morning

Tuesday 05 May 2020 07:56 BST

Matt Hancock says the pilot of the coronavirus contact tracing app on the Isle of Wight will begin on Tuesday

It is what it is. Love Island 2020 has been mugged off by ITV producers – pushed back until next year because of the “impossibility” in safeguarding contestants who had been hoping to spend the summer on the Balearic isle of Majorca. It’s the Isle of Wight that’s feeling the love right now. All eyes are a new contact-tracing app launched there today, which might just help safeguard us all from the future spread of the coronavirus by ushering in an extensive track and trace programme. I’m Adam Forrest, and welcome to The Independent’s daily Inside Politics briefing during the coronavirus crisis.

Inside the bubble

Our chief political commentator John Rentoul on what to look out for today:

Health secretary Matt Hancock will be taking questions in the Commons today, while chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance and deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries appear before health select committee MPs. Panjandrums who run football, cricket and rugby will be talking about how to get sport back on TV at another virtual select committee. And Michael Gove, minister for sorting things out, will be telling a Lords committee there will be no extension requested to the Brexit transition period.

Daily briefing

DUTY TO DOWNLOAD: Healthcare and council staff on the Isle of Wight have been asked to start using a test version of the NHS’s coronavirus contact-tracing app today ahead of a wider roll-out on the island this Thursday. “Please download the app to protect the NHS and save lives,” said Matt Hancock, adding: “Where the Isle of Wight goes, Britain follows” (not a sentence we’ve ever heard before). The health secretary said a network of 18,000 contact tracing workers would be set up by mid-May. When asked at the Downing Street briefing how many are already in place, he offered the vague answer “thousands”. Hancock will be grilled on privacy concerns about the app in the Commons today. There is some encouraging news on antibody tests. The government is in talks with pharma giant Roche on rolling out an antibody test with a near-100 per cent accuracy rate, according to the health secretary.

MIND THE GAPS: We have a few more clues on what the government expects of business in the weeks ahead. Draft guidance seen by the BBC and BuzzFeed News reportedly urges employers to minimise hot-desking and bring in protective screens. It’s not good enough for the unions. The GMB said draft plans “have been thrown together in a hurry”, while the TUC complained of “huge gaps” over employers’ responsibilities when it comes to protective kit and testing. Elsewhere, the Treasury has revealed 23 per cent of the workforce is now registered for the job retention scheme. Another 2.5 million people were signed up last week. Chancellor Rishi Sunak didn’t sound enthusiastic about extending it. “I am working … to figure out the most effective way to wind down the scheme and ease people back into work in a measured way,” he told ITV News. Over 1.8 million universal credit claims have been made since mid-March.

AGREE TO DISAGREE: Labour leader Keir Starmer has called for a “national consensus” on how to tackle the coronavirus as the government struggles to move us out of lockdown. There is precious little consensus on the way forward on post-Brexit talks, as the UK and US begin negotiations (via videoconferencing) on a trade agreement today. Labour have warned workers’ rights and food standards could be “sacrificed” by over-eager ministers – the kind of rhetoric we heard during the Corbyn era. The Starmer era is bringing about some big changes, however. Jennie Formby is standing down as Labour’s general secretary, saying it was the “right time” to make way. Elsewhere, Tory MP Conor Burns has resigned as a trade minister after the Commons Committee on Standards found he used his position as an MP to “intimidate” a member of the public over a financial dispute involving his father.

THEATRE OF CRUELTY: The White House has pushed back against a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) memo leaked to The New York Times which shows the daily US death rates is forecast to rise to around 3,000 by June. Donald Trump – who said he was “confident” of getting a vaccine by the end of 2020 – spent his time attacking MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, suggesting the TV host be investigated for murder over a conspiracy theory dating back to 2001. Scarborough called Trump’s Twitter message “extraordinarily cruel”. Meanwhile, Chinese state media has hit back at US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who claimed there was evidence showing the virus originated in a Wuhan lab. The CCTV broadcaster titled one of its commentary pieces: “Evil Pompeo is wantonly spewing poison and spreading lies”.

SPECIOUS THEORY ON ORIGINS? Dr Michael Ryan, the official in charge of the World Health Organisation (WHO)’s emergency response to Covid-19, rejected the idea of the virus originating in a lab. He said the US government had provided no “data” to justify the idea. “From our perspective, this remains speculative,” said Dr Ryan. Elsewhere, the secretary general of the United Nations Antonio Guterres urged more countries to provide funds for a global effort to combat the coronavirus. The initial pledging drive is expected to raise around £6.5bn, but Guterres said “five times that amount” would be need to make sure any vaccines and effective drugs could be distributed around the world.

TIP OF THE EISBERG: A new study in Germany suggests at least 10 times as many people in the country have been infected by the virus than official estimates indicate. About 1.8 million people living in Germany must have been infected, more than 10 times the number of about 160,000 confirmed cases so far, University of Bonn researchers concluded from a field trial in one of the worst hit towns. The preliminary study results – which have yet to be peer reviewed – also suggest around 20 per cent of people contracting the virus show no symptoms at all. The intriguing study comes as Germany reopened museums, hairdressers and churches on Monday under strict conditions.

On the record

“Some scenarios have suggested we are potentially spending as much on the furlough scheme as we do on the NHS for example. Now, clearly that is not a sustainable situation.”

Rishi Sunak suggests the job retention scheme won’t be extended.

From the Twitterati

“I’m missing something here. Why is Isle of Wight being told to download the app AND stay at home. If they all stay at home how can they test the app?”

Andrew Neil has doubts about the value of the app pilot...

“My parents (both in their 80s) live on the Isle of Wight. If Matt Hancock had any idea what it was like trying to get my mother to use WhatsApp, or indeed getting my father to hold a mobile, let alone own one, I doubt he’d be using the phrase ‘huge enthusiasm’ again in a hurry.

…as does comedian Alastair Barrie.