Coronavirus: NHS app does not work with more than 60,000 daily tests in England, developers suggest - Sky News

The developers of the new NHS coronavirus tracing app have suggested that more than 60,000 tests carried out in England yesterday - just under a third of the total - cannot be linked to its systems.

The admission appears to undermine the central role of the software, which is to warn people when they have come into contact with anyone who subsequently tests positive.

The long-awaited NHS coronavirus contact-tracing app launched two days ago across England and Wales.

Image: This was the NHS app response to the issue which was raised by a user on Twitter

However, in a response to a tweet by a user who said they had been tested but could not upload the result, the app's developers said it is not linked to test results processed in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital.

"If your test took place in a Public Health England lab or NHS hospital, or as part of national surveillance testing conducted by the Office for National Statistics, test results cannot currently be linked with the app whether they're positive or negative," they wrote.

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Official government figures show a total of 210,275 people were tested in England on Friday, including 61,481 in hospitals and PHE labs (Pillar 1) and 148,894 in testing centres (Pillar 2).

The admission on the app's official Twitter account suggests the results of just under a third (29%) of the tests could not be linked.

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A Department of Health spokesperson said: "We are urgently working to enable positive tests for people who aren't already given a code to be added to the COVID-19 app.

"NHS Test and Trace will continue to contact people by text, email or phone if your test is positive advising you to self-isolate and for those who don't have a code, the contact tracers will shortly be able to provide codes to insert in the app.

"If you book your test via the app the results will be automatically recorded in the app and the isolation countdown will be updated."

Labour's Jonathan Ashworth questioned the apparent flaw on social media.

The shadow health secretary tweeted: "We all want to see this app succeed. We've encouraged people to download it.

"But have they really launched an app that doesn't actually link to tests carried out by NHS hospital labs & PHE labs instead only including tests carried out via the outsourced lighthouse lab network??"

The Welsh government has pointed out that Public Health Wales results can be processed and urged people to continue using the app.

Posting on Twitter, Welsh health minister Vaughan Gething urged people "shouting" that the app is "useless" to "please calm down".

Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, former chair of the ethics advisory board for the first edition of the app said:
"This is clearly a glitch. I imagine it won't be that difficult to sort out, and the focus is on making sure the system is integrated.

"If they book the tests with the system they can feed them back into the app, clearly we haven't yet got it right in terms of the other parts of the testing system being able to feed in and we would expect that to be sorted pretty quickly."

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran told Sky News: "How on Earth can we trust this government with our data with a test-trace isolate system that is meant to be the key to unlocking this country through this pandemic and keeping us all safe, when the very basics of the information that are meant to be given to this app, we find out over a tweet? It is just bizarre."

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has called the new mobile phone app an "important step forward" in the UK's fight against COVID-19.

It asks users to self-isolate for 14 days if it detects they were in close proximity to someone with coronavirus.

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Sky's political correspondent Rob Powell said: "This could be a fairly serious blow to what was touted obviously by the prime minister as a world-beating test and trace system.

"To add insult to injury, this appears to be an England-only issue."

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2020-09-26 12:22:30Z
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