Isle Of Wight Residents First In Country To Download Coronavirus App

A "revolutionary" new smartphone app — which will be used to contact trace coronavirus symptoms — will be officially be rolled out on the Isle of Wight tomorrow (Tuesday).

The NHS has revealed details of the new technology, which will track COVID-19 infections as restrictions on movement ease.

From tomorrow, residents on the Isle of Wight will be among the first in the country to have access to the app. It is expected to be rolled out nationwide in the next few weeks.

Islanders will be asked to turn on Bluetooth and allow notifications, and enter the first half of their postcode.

They will then be prompted with a question: "How are you feeling today?"

Anyone who believes they may have caught COVID-19 can run through a short checklist, which asks whether they have a fever or a continuous cough.

If your symptoms indicate you may have coronavirus, you will be given a reference number and told to call in for a test.

You will also be invited to upload a list of your contacts to the NHS system, which will use a risk-scoring algorithm to decide which contacts are potentially dangerous.

Today, Isle of Wight Radio has been speaking to some of the key people involved in the roll-out of the app

How will the app work?

The app is designed to notify others who have it, if they have been in contact with someone displaying COVID-19 symptoms.

Once it is downloaded, if someone else with the app is near you, the app will record how far away your two phones are from each other and for how long, using Bluetooth.

However, Professor John Newton, Director of Health Improvement at Public Health England, says that the app will not notify you if you simply walk past someone with the virus. He says the contact has to be '"meaningful".

He said:

"The app needs to notify meaningful contact. It will be somewhat imprecise. One of the huge benefits of being able to test it out on the Isle of Wight is that fine tuning. So we will be asking you to bear with us a bit."

If you then use the app to report that you have coronavirus symptoms, the information on your phone is then used to send an anonymous message to those people. The message will offer them advice on what they should do to stop the virus from spreading to other people.

John says the app does not use GPS and it does not record locations, so you cannot be tracked.

The NHS COVID-19 app can help you arrange a swab test for coronavirus. If you enter symptoms of coronavirus into the app, you will be referred to a call centre and someone will help arrange for a swab test to be sent to your home on the Island.

Is it the economy being prioritised over safety?

There have been question marks over whether the app is being used to get the economy up and running again.

John Newton says this is not the case:

"We are not changing any advice over social distancing on the Isle of Wight. This is an additional tool to drive down infection to make it even safer so that when we do relax social distancing there is a lot less infection around".

Will people's privacy be exploited?

Geraint Lewis, Senior Responsible Officer for the app from NHSX says Islanders data will be protected, "as we would with any other NHS data."

"It has been developed by the NHS for the NHS. Those sonar pings... if we imagine an iPhone as a submarine... that information would stay on my phone for a rolling 28 day period. Anything beyond 28 days gets deleted and replaced."

How do you propose getting the elderly population on board?

Geraint Lewis added:

"Although many people do have smartphones, many don't. The short answer is, everybody will benefit from the existence of the app.

"The same way as if a family chooses not to immunize one of their child's against measles, they still benefit by someone else in the child's class having their vaccine."