Contact tracking app to help facilitate blocking will be ‘ready in weeks’

An infectious disease expert advising app creators added that the outbreak could be brought under control if only two-thirds of the population used it.

Mr Gould told the Commons Committee on Science and Technology today: ‘We hope, of course, to have the app ready when it is needed, by the time the country seeks to have the tools to safely exit the blockade.

“We’re going as fast as we can, we have teams of people looking at it 24/7.”

He admitted that the work could have started before March 7, two weeks before the closing began, adding: “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish it had.”

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The application will keep an anonymous record of those who approach each other via Bluetooth.

Users will be able to tell the app if they were positive for coronavirus or show symptoms, which will send notification to others who have been in close contact.

Gould added that getting 80 percent of people to install the app would be difficult but necessary to be part of the government’s “core message” about the virus.

Professor Christophe Fraser, a senior epidemiologist at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, who has been advising several European countries on the development of contact tracking applications, said that relatively low usage estimates would be enough to curb the virus. .

Professor Fraser said: ‘Because we don’t know what the app’s acceptance will be, in scenarios that are relatively pessimistic we discovered that if approximately 60 percent of the population uses the app, it would be enough to get the number of reproduction below one and control the epidemic.

A breeding number of less than one means that each newly infected person would infect less than one person on average.

Australia, Israel and Singapore have introduced voluntary contact tracking apps, although the latter has been plagued with technical problems and only 20% of the population has reportedly downloaded it.

South Korea and Taiwan, which have had relative success in smoothing the infection curve, track people using their mobile phone data, regardless of whether they consent.

After some South Koreans reportedly mocked the system by leaving their phones at home, authorities announced that repeat criminals will be forced to wear bracelets.

Much of the rest of the world relies on word of mouth and calls from healthcare workers, which Professor Fraser has argued is not enough to keep up with the coronavirus.

He previously wrote: corona Coronavirus is different from previous epidemics and requires multiple interdependent containment strategies.

‘Our analysis suggests that almost half of coronavirus transmissions occur in the very early phase of infection, before symptoms appear, so we need a fast and effective mobile app to alert people who have been exposed.

“Our mathematical model suggests that traditional methods of tracing public health contacts are too slow to keep up with this virus.”

On Monday, Boris Johnson used his first speech after recovering from the virus to insist on the need to keep the country under lock and key, although he said more will be revealed in the coming days about plans to lift the measures.

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