LONDON (REUTERS) – Britain will switch to Apple and Google technology for its Covid-19 test-and-trace app, ditching its homegrown system which was not working well enough on Apple’s iPhone, the government said on Thursday (June 18).
The test-and-trace programme is key to reopening the country but has been dogged by problems. A smartphone app developed by the National Health Service (NHS) was initially expected to be rolled out nationwide in May but did not materialise.
The decentralised Google-Apple system will benefit from work done on the abortive NHS app, said Dido Harding, head of the test-and-trace programme, and Matthew Gould, chief executive of the health service’s technology unit NHSX.
