U.K. Extends Virus Testing, Says Ready for National Tracing Push
U.K. Delays Virus App Roll-Out in Setback for Easing Lockdown
(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. extended the availability of coronavirus testing to anyone over five years old showing symptoms as Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the country is ready to start a national tracing program to control the disease.
The national launch of a contact-tracing mobile phone app has been delayed, in a setback to the tracing effort, but some 21,000 contact tracers have been recruited, including 7,500 health-care professionals who will give clinical advice to call handlers, the health secretary said.
“We now have the people in place,” Hancock told Parliament on Wednesday. “We have the elements we need to roll our our national trace and test service.”
A major expansion of the U.K.’s testing and tracing program is a key feature of its strategy to relax the virus lockdown, as the government seeks to emulate countries like South Korea and Germany in identifying where the virus is spreading so it can impose targeted restrictions. Virus tests were previously only available to certain groups of people, such as workers deemed ‘essential’ and the over-65s.
A mobile phone app, which would form a crucial part of the tracing program, was supposed to be ready in mid-May. It is now planned to be released nationally within “weeks,” Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman James Slack told reporters on Monday.
“It remains our aim to roll out the app in the coming weeks,” Slack said, without giving a specific reason for the delay. “It is possible to do track and trace work separately to the app.”
The app, which is still being tested on the Isle of Wight, informs users whether they’ve come into close contact with someone who may have had the virus. Hancock previously said it would be a key component of the U.K.’s strategy to relax lockdown measures. If the app is effective and widely used in the population, it would allow the government to spot flare-ups of the disease and better control its spread, he said.
“The app is successfully being piloted and we are rolling out that system,” Hancock said on Monday.
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