Number of NHS app pings falls by 20% despite England's release from lockdown

12 August 2021, 12:51

The NHS coronavirus app issued over 300,000 contact tracing alerts advising people to self-isolate in England and Wales last week - a drop of 20% from the previous seven days.

A total of 317,132 people were told to self-isolate after coming into close contact with someone who has since tested positive.

This is a decrease of 20% on the previous week’s figure, and is less than half the number of the week before, when almost 680,000 people were traced by the app in England. It comes despite the vast majority of Covid restrictions in England being eased on July 19.

At the same time, the app was downloaded over 125,000 times in the week to 4 August.

However, the number of venue check-ins also fell to its lowest level since April, despite the removal of all legal social restrictions and re-opening of hospitality venues such as nightclubs.

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This comes after the NHS coronavirus app was updated last week to contact fewer people to inform them to self-isolate. It now looks only at the previous two days of contacts of someone who has tested positive for coronavirus, instead of five.

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said that although the "logic" behind the app is being tweaked, the sensitivity and risk threshold will remain unchanged.

The app had previously been criticised due to the so-called "pingdemic" leaving vital industries such as food distribution short-staffed.

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Mr Javid has said that vaccines are what "will bring this pandemic to an end".

"Asking the close contacts of people with Covid-19 to self-isolate has played a critical role in helping us get this virus under control, and millions of people across the UK have made enormous sacrifices by doing this," he said.

From Monday, people who are fully vaccinated will no longer have to self-isolate if they are pinged by the NHS app, and are instead advised to get a free PCR test as soon as possible. If they test positive, they must then self-isolate.

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