121,000 PPE gowns have been delivered over the past week, Hancok says. “Thank you to all involved in the herculean effort on PPE,” he says.
He says he wants to outline the next steps for tracing infections via an app, that will allow people to log their symptoms anonymously, data only to be used by NHS staff.
The app is being tested, Hancock says.
Today I wanted to outline the next step: a new NHS app for contact tracing. If you become unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus, you can securely tell this new NHS app and the app will then send an alert anonymously to other app users that you’ve been in significant contact with over the past few days, even before you had symptoms, so that they know and can act accordingly.
All data will be handled according to the highest ethical and security standards, and would only be used for NHS care and research, and we won’t hold it any longer than it’s needed. And as part of our commitment to transparency we’ll be publishing the source code, too.
We’re already testing this app and as we do this we’re working closely with the world’s leading tech companies and renowned experts in digital safety and ethics.”
