NHS coronavirus contact tracing app to be rolled out at end of May after Isle of Wight trial, Grant Shapps says

Imogen Braddick3 May 2020

The NHS coronavirus contact tracing app will be trialled in the Isle of Wight this week before being rolled out more widely later this month, the Transport Secretary said.

Grant Shapps said the NHSX app, which will be "completely confidential", will need to be downloaded by more than half of the UK to work effectively.

He told Sky’s Sophy Ridge On Sunday: “The idea is that we will encourage as many people to take this up as possible.

"This is going to be a huge national effort and we need for this to work 50-60 per cent of people to be using this app.

"Not everybody has a smartphone, and I appreciate that for various reasons not everybody will download it but it will be the best possible way to help the NHS."

He said the app is a "fantastic way" to ensure the country can “keep a lid” on coronavirus and prevent a second wave.

Mr Shapps said he did not know how many of the 18,000 contact tracers the Government is seeking have been hired.

He said: "It’s not an issue because the app isn’t going to be available for some time yet, a few weeks yet, but when it is there we will have the people in place."

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps
Getty Images

The Transport Secretary added that Britain will not return to “business as usual” this month after Boris Johnson sets out his roadmap for how the UK may come out of the lockdown.

He said: "I don’t think we should expect us to go from this situation that we have at the moment of social distancing back to where we were in February – that’s clearly not going to happen and I don’t think anyone imagines that for one moment.

"The most important thing is that the absolute focus of what the Prime Minister will be announcing later in the week is that what we do do going forward doesn’t undo the brilliant work people have been doing to get that R number below 1 – the all-critical reproduction rate doesn’t come back up because that’s when we’d see a second spike.

"So no I’m afraid it is definitely not going to be business as usual but we do want to make sure that people understand where the routemap lies."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in