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The government expects more than half of the 80,000 homes on the Isle of Wight to download the app after it launched on Monday, Cabinet Minister Michael Gove said Sunday.
If the test is successful, the app will be rolled out across the country later this month, he added.
Such apps can be very effective in stopping massive infections, according to Christophe Fraser, an infectious disease expert at the University of Oxford who is helping to develop the UK app and has extensively investigated outbreaks of SARS, H1N1 and Ebola. By alerting people that they may have been exposed to the virus, they can take steps to prevent further transmission.
In addition to the app, the UK government says it wants to hire 18,000 contact trackers in the coming weeks as part of its overall efforts to track the virus once the blocking measures have been eased. Contact trackers will track where an infected person has been and who they may have contacted.
Matthew Gould, who leads apps development for the National Health Service, told a UK parliamentary committee on Monday that by centralizing the data, health authorities can obtain information on important information, such as which symptoms are most likely to lead to a positive diagnosis and whether there is a difference in contagion depending on the time it takes for symptoms to develop.
“If privacy was the only thing we were optimizing here, then it could be that a decentralized approach should be the default option,” Gould said, adding that the NHS is developing the app in consultation with the UK Information Commissioner. “We believe that a centralized approach gave us the potential, even when we did not receive personal data [from app users], to obtain some very important data that will give a serious idea of the virus that will help us. “
