April 12, 2020

expert comments on the Health Secretary’s announcement at the daily press conference that a NHS app for tracing infections is being tested for use in the UK

Matt Hancock has announced that a NHS app for tracing COVID-19 infections is being tested for use in the UK.

Prof Martin Hibbert, Professor of Emerging Infectious Disease, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), said:

“These types of Apps offer the opportunity to help in contact tracing and identifying more people who have been in contact with positive cases and so at risk of being positive themselves. All positive people should isolate themselves to avoid transmitting the virus to others. If we are to move away from isolating everybody that we can (‘the current lock-down’) and let non-infected have more movement, we need to find ways of identifying as many of the people who need to be quarantining as we can. Testing people who have symptoms is clearly a good way, but we know that people without symptoms can also transmit the virus. Testing people who have been in contact with positive cases increases the chance of identifying these asymptomatic positive cases and stopping them transmitting to others. On their own, these Apps and contact tracing is not sufficient, as this virus is able to transmit too easily, but in combination with mass testing and some social distancing, they can add a further level of support.

“We should be trialling these Apps now, so that they can play this additional role when we begin lifting of the lock down a little. Making these Apps work well and quickly enough will not be easy. But the success of the mass testing and these Apps in identifying cases, will determine how much of the lock down we can lighten.”

Professor Eivor Oborn, an expert on healthcare technology at Warwick Business School, said:

“Using an app to identify and isolate anyone who has come into contact with an infected person could be a critical factor in leaving lockdown.

“The virus is spreading too quickly for the pandemic to be contained by simply isolating those we have tested and know are infected, or by manually tracing all their contacts.

“Working out all the places a patient has been and finding everyone they have been in contact can take days or weeks – much slower than it takes the virus to spread.

“By modelling the spread of the virus in response to different tracing strategies, researchers have shown that only digital contact-tracking could get control over the pandemic.

“This would involve using a smartphone app to track people’s movements and automatically notifying them if they have come in contact with someone known to have caught the virus. It would then encourage them to immediately self-isolate and prevent further contamination.

“This kind of contact-tracing technology has already been used with some success in countries such as China and South Korea, but there have been questions whether western countries would accept such levels of surveillance.

“Given our near wartime conditions, it seems reasonable to think that voluntarily downloading an app would be preferable to remaining in lockdown, even if it constantly tracks you.

“A tracking app would enable us to watch over each other so we can get safely back to work, school and something resembling our regular lives.

“People may actually start to expect this level of intervention in their lives from the state or public health organisations.”

Prof Keith Neal, Emeritus Professor in the Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases, University of Nottingham, said:

“From what I know from other countries the app uses Bluetooth to identify other phones with the app when the two phones have been close to each other in the last 14 days.  Each app user has a unique identifier.  If someone tests positive then they use their app to inform the system of having tested positive.  The system then alerts all the phone users who have been in close contact with the unique identifier of the case to self-isolate and get tested.  Data should be deleted after a set period like 14 days so those exposed too long before do not get an alert to get tested and data is not held longer than necessary.  

“Even with only testing clinical cases in hospital it will still identify some of  those at risk.  With widespread testing it will work much better.  The more users of the app the better.  An option is having the app as an early route out of lockdown allowing app users less restrictions.

“This has the potential to radically help contact tracing and allow containment to be used as the strategy again. 

“The privacy and security issues need to be addressed but being told you have been in contact with a case has huge advantages to the individual user.  After the pandemic is over the app can simply be deleted.”

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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