Coronavirus: NHS contact tracing app trial begins on Isle of Wight amid hopes tracking can help lift lockdown

Ministers hope smartphone app could help with plans to allow some economic activity to resume

The new NHS contact-tracing app which is designed to track the spread of coronavirus and could help the UK lift its lockdown will be rolled out for the first time today on the Isle of Wight.

NHS and council staff on the Isle of Wight have been urged to download the Covid-19 smartphone app from Tuesday, with the rest of the island’s population invited to follow them from Thursday.

If the trial is successful, the app could be used across the UK within weeks as ministers look for a way to ease lockdown restrictions and allow some economic activity to resume.

Bob Seely, the Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, has urged people in his constituency to support the technology.

“Talking to the experts and the scientists, anything above 20 per cent and 25 per cent [of the population using the app] gives us decent and good data,” Mr Seely said.

“The exponential benefit hits when you get about 50 per cent, or near that, and then, effectively, you can trace the virus.

“Then, by helping those people with it, we starve the virus of other people to infect and the virus dies out.”

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has appealed to everyone who is able to download the app to do so and insisted that backing the government’s test and trace programme will save lives.

The “test, track and trace” programme will allow the government to take a “more targeted approach” to the lockdown while still containing Covid-19, he said.

However, Matthew Gould, the chief executive of NHSX, suggested to a parliamentary committee on Monday that there would be issues with the app in its early stages.

“There will be unintended consequences, there will for sure be some things we have to evolve,” Mr Gould said.

“We need to level with the public on this, that when we launch it, it won’t be perfect and as our understanding of the virus develops, so will the app.”

The government has also faced resistance from some Tory MPs who have raised concerns about the trial’s implications for civil liberties over the gathering of data on individuals’ movements.

Marcus Fysh, the MP for Yeovil, warned “widespread surveillance” was “not acceptable” in the UK and said it was essential the system was voluntary.

The contact tracing app uses Bluetooth to track and trace contacts between users, and alerts people if someone they interacted with has displayed symptoms or tested positive for Covid-19.

Officials have insisted it has been designed with privacy and security “front of mind” with the data stored on an individual's phone until the point they contact the NHS to report symptoms and request a test.

Nevertheless, Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen said the government should look at decentralised app models - where contact-tracing data stays on a user's device.

“We're extremely concerned that the government may be planning to route private data through a central database, opening the door to pervasive state surveillance and privacy infringement, with potentially discriminatory effects,” she said.

A total of 28,734 people have died after testing positive for Covid-19 in the UK, as of Monday, following an increase of 288 deaths in the last 24 hour period - the lowest day-on-day increase since the end of March.

Additional reporting by PA