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Britain was ready on Monday to launch a new smartphone tracking app for coronavirus on an island off the south coast of England, as the country seeks to ease a six-week national blockade.
The app, developed by the state-run National Health Service (NHS), will be tested on the Isle of Wight before its planned launch in Britain later this month.
It is seen as a key part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plans to lift the stay-at-home orders imposed in late March.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that the app would be available to health professionals on the island starting Tuesday, before being rolled out in all of the approximately 80,000 homes on the island later this week.
He said the app was part of the government’s new “test, track and trace” strategy that aimed to “hunt down and isolate the virus so it can’t reproduce.”
“This does not mean the end of social distancing on the Isle of Wight or anywhere else,” Hancock added in the daily Downing Street briefing.
Britain is one of the countries hardest hit in the COVID-19 pandemic, announcing another 288 deaths on Monday to bring the death toll to 28,734, the third highest worldwide and almost on par with second place in Italy. .
Johnson said last week that the country had “passed the peak” of the outbreak but was not yet ready to emerge from the lockdown.
The measures, which are evaluated at three-week intervals, are scheduled for review on Thursday, but the British leader is not expected to present his proposals for relaxation until Sunday, according to media reports.
Meanwhile, officials will assess how well the smartphone app works on the Isle of Wight.
‘Continue blocking’
The island is seen as an ideal place for trial because it has no direct links to mainland Britain and has a relatively low number of confirmed virus cases.
The app will be rolled out alongside a newly recruited team of contact trackers, eventually to number 18,000 across the country, to help track people identified by the tool as being at risk of infection.
But Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon warned that this was not a “quick fix” and that the number of infected people was still too high to make a “significant change” to the social distancing regime.
“It is very likely that on Thursday I will ask you to keep the running of the bulls longer,” he said.
Britons are currently told to stay home unless they need to work, buy essentials or exercise daily, but they must stay at least two meters away from other people.
The government’s new guidance on maintaining social distancing in the workplace suggests that British office workers will be encouraged to stay home for months to avoid overwhelming the transport system, according to the BBC and the Financial Times.
The guide urges employers to stagger shifts and prevent people from sharing desks or stationery. Workers dealing with clients must also be protected by plastic screens.
A date for the reopening of the schools has not yet been decided, a Johnson spokesman told reporters.
If you want to help fight COVID-19, we’ve compiled an updated list of community initiatives designed to help medical workers and low-income people in this article. Link: [UPDATED] Anti-COVID-19 initiatives: helping Indonesia fight the outbreak
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