How many Brits have deleted life-saving track and trace app from their phones? No idea, junior minister tells MPs

UK government has admitted it is in the dark about how many of the citizens who downloaded the NHS Test and Trace App have since deleted it or switched off Bluetooth for the app, rendering it obsolete.

The costly App, which finally came to market last summer after dithering by politicians, is designed to help combat the spread of Covid-19 by registering entry into a venue where close proximity is likely, pinging other users within Bluetooth range, and advising on self-isolation should the users come close to someone testing positive for COVID-19.

Yet in a telling written answer to Parliament yesterday, Jo Churchill, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, said:

"We do not hold data on the number of people who have deleted the app or the number of people with the app but with Bluetooth turned off. We are currently considering what further metrics we may be able to publish about app usage."

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The app is coming under pressure for doing the very thing it was designed to do. As cases of COVID-19 surge in the UK with the economy reopening on 19 July, the code is telling more and more people to self-isolate.

A poll published by The Guardian found that around one in five one-time app users had already deleted it; among those aged 18-34 that ratio rose to around a third.

The motivation for scrubbing the inconvenient bit of code is clear: people needing to work.

The Financial Times has reported that as the particularly virulent delta variant sweeps across parts of the UK, many companies are missing a fifth of their staff due to self-isolation.

"Labour shortages have hit factories, shops and warehouses, with workers 'pinged' by the NHS Covid app and told to self-isolate for 10 days if they have come into contact with an infected person," the pink newspaper said.

The industry lobby group CBI is also pressuring the government to change the rules for self-isolation when individuals come into contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.

Given the app's difficult gestation, in which an attempt to build a central database was abandoned in favour of a distributed approach (from dominant mobile operating system vendors Apple and Google), it is alarming that the government is seemingly uninterested in how it is being used, especially as it has proved effective.

According to a study in Nature earlier this year, the app and resulting self-isolation may have avoided 284,000 cases from its launch on 24 September 2020 to the end of December 2020, during a time when it was used regularly by approximately 16.5 million people or 28 per cent of the total population in Britain.

The £22bn Test and Trace programme was, however, criticised in March by the Public Accounts Committee - a spending watchdog comprised of MPs from across the political divides - for failing to limit the number of lockdowns. MPs said there was "no clear evidence" to judge its success, i.e - no data.

Who is using the simple and potentially life-saving app now is anyone's guess, according to Churchill.

"Data saves lives" was the mantra of former UK health secretary Matt Hancock before a CCTV camera revealed to world+dog his predilection for indiscretion. Data saves lives, it seems, unless it is a political or economic inconvenience, in which case the government seems to think it best to move on. ®