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Here are the main points from Matt Hancock’s press conference.
We found that our app works well on Android devices but Apple software prevents iPhones being used effectively for contact tracing unless you are using Apple’s own technology …
As it stands, our app won’t work because Apple won’t change their system, but it can measure distance.
This is a global challenge. What we have done in really rigorously testing both our own Covid-19 app and the Google-Apple version is demonstrating that none of them are working sufficiently well enough to actually be reliable to determine whether any of us should self-isolate for two weeks.
Matt Hancock and Baroness Dido Harding make clear that neither thinks Google-Apple tech is reliable enough for public use yet. So have Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy and others got it wrong? I’ve asked Google and Apple to respond. https://t.co/ntduTD9FIE
I’m from Newmarket, we back both horses. We took the decision in May to start building the Google-Apple version as well and then because we built both we could test both.
And actually the best way to get new technology going is to test different approaches.
Deeply frustrating hearing Dido Harding and Matt Hancock saying how they have always ‘backed both horses’ on the app, when for weeks the NHSX have been absolutely insistent they had no interest in pursing the Apple Google model. They are slightly rewriting history here.
Far better to go with both versions and now we’ve got problems with both versions but there’s parts of each that can come together to build something that’s stronger than either version.
The reality is if we had not backed both horses we wouldn’t have a way forward.
Precisely because we’ve developed our own and developed some really sophisticated distance calculations we think that we can enhance the Google-Apple platform such that it will work.
We have to get better at hunting out the virus. Seventy per cent of people or so who have the virus won’t show any symptoms or they will have such mild symptoms they might not spot it. That’s why we are doing targeted testing for people in high-contact professions such as health and social care, but also other roles where we are looking to expand that.
We are working on what is needed to get schools open in September, to get all schools open in September. And there is a review into the current two-metre rule. But the two-metre rule is in itself a social distancing measure.
Removing it has an impact in terms of the transmission of the disease, so we have to make sure in that review that we have the space and the virus is under control enough to be able to make the change and replace the two-metre rule.
As we learn more about the virus we will continue to take into account which groups may be particularly vulnerable, including, for example, those from ethnic minority backgrounds so that we can protect the most at risk first, should a vaccine become available.
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