Covid-19: Tracking

Lord Scriven Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Scriven]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the use of Exposure Notifications Express in mobile telephone operating systems for the tracking of COVID-19.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Bethell) (Con)]

My Lords, engineers at the Department for Health and Social Care are undertaking an initial assessment of the Exposure Notifications Express capability in consultation with Apple. At this stage, the assessment is paper-based, as software is not available outside the United States. We anticipate ENS becoming available in European countries in one or two months. We continue to assess this capability as information becomes available.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, it is welcome that the Government have finally decided to move to a decentralised system. Apart from the number of downloads, what success criteria that can be attributable to the Covid-19 app have the Government set, how will these be measured and where will the public be able to see progress against those criteria?

[Lord Bethell (Con)]

My Lords, the ultimate aim of the app is to break the chain of transmission. That is done through a number of ways. One is to provide a proximity alert for those who spend time with people who have tested positive. It also has a check-in capability to help our track and trace efforts, and we are building more applications on it all the time. One encouraging statistic is that until 10 o’clock yesterday, there were 6.5 million check-ins through the app. This is an astonishing number and it shows that those who are socialising are using the app.