UK National Health Service employee Anni Adams looks at new NHS app to trace contacts with people potentially infected with the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) being trialled on Isle of Wight, Britain, May 5, 2020.
London, United Kingdom - Britain buys 10 million antibody tests for care staff, patients and also exempts care staff from migrant health tax.
Published: Sat 23 May 2020, 1:12 AM
Health secretary Matt Hancock said on Thursday he was confident that a COovid-19 track-and-trace system would be operating by June 1, allowing lockdown rules to be eased without risking a spike in infections.
Health workers have warned that any failure in Britain's ability to track and trace people with the novel coronavirus and their contacts would result in a second deadly wave.
Britain is currently testing a Covid-19 smartphone app - based on Bluetooth - on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England where the government says more than half the residents had downloaded it.
James Brokenshire, the junior interior minister in charge of security, said on Thursday that there were technical issues with the app but that traditional measures could be rolled out first.
Hancock, however, said the app was working alongside a conventional tracing system that uses phone and email to alert those who had been in contact with anybody who had tested positive for the virus.
"The app is working in the Isle of Wight," he said. "We want to make sure this whole system lands well and supports the ability safely to make changes to social distancing rules."
Britain's tracing coordinator John Newton said the app was not required before conventional track and tracing could start.
"They are distinct but complementary, and it is perfectly OK, in fact possibly advantageous, to introduce one before the other," he said.
The government has recruited 24,000 trackers to manually trace the contacts of people who test positive for Covid-19 using telephone and email, Hancock said.
But Britain's progress has been criticised: opposition lawmakers said an earlier promise of a nationwide roll-out of a National Health Service (NHS)-developed smartphone app had slipped from the middle of this month.
Rival technology developed by Apple and Google was launched in several other countries on Wednesday. The companies said they were in talks with Britain about the system.
Meanwhile, the British government on Thursday announced that foreign care workers would be exempt from a charge imposed on migrants to fund the health service, after an outcry sparked by the coronavirus outbreak.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had defended the immigration health surcharge as recently as Wednesday, saying it raised much-needed funds for the state-run NHS.
But Keir Starmer, the main opposition Labour leader, condemned the levy at a time when so many foreign NHS and social-care workers are on the frontline of the Covid-19 response.
He quoted a letter from the Doctors' Association, an industry body, saying the tax was "a gross insult to all".
A spokesman for Johnson's Downing Street office said all NHS and care staff, including porters and cleaners, will now be exempt.
"The purpose of the NHS surcharge is to benefit the NHS, help to care for the sick and save lives," he said.
"NHS and care workers from abroad who are granted visas are doing this already by the fantastic contribution which they make."
Starmer said the decision was "a victory for common decency and the right thing to do".
Noting that it came just hours before the weekly tribute to frontline staff, he added: "We cannot clap our carers one day and then charge them to use our NHS the next."
The decision is the second change of policy towards foreign workers in 24 hours.
On Wednesday, the government expanded a bereavement scheme allowing families and dependents of migrant NHS staff who die from coronavirus to stay in Britain, after criticism that care workers, cleaners and porters were left out.
Johnson's Conservatives have heaped praise on the NHS for the way it is coping with coronavirus, which has killed 36,042 people in Britain, according to the latest official tally.
But critics say a decade of spending cuts had left the service stretched to the limit when the outbreak erupted.
Johnson told MPs on Wednesday that during his time in intensive care with Covid-19 last month, he was a "personal beneficiary of carers who have come from abroad and frankly saved my life".
But he said: "We must look at the realities. This is a great national service -- it is a national institution -- that needs funding."
The immigration health surcharge was introduced by the Conservatives in 2015 and is currently £400 (Dh1,800) a year, rising to £624 (Dh2,802) in October.
It currently does not apply to EU nationals but those who arrive in Britain after the post-Brexit transition period will have to pay.
Britain on Thursday also announced it had signed deals to buy more than 10 million coronavirus antibody tests from pharmaceutical firms Roche and Abbott for distribution to frontline healthcare workers.
"From next week we will begin rolling these out in a phased way, at first to health and care staff, patients and residents" of care homes, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said.
Speaking at the government's daily coronavirus briefing, he said: "This is an important milestone and it represents further progress in our national testing programme."
He cautioned that it was not yet confirmed that having Covid-19 antibodies conferred immunity, but said the tests would help better understand the disease.
Hancock also revealed that around 17 per cent of people in London, and around five per cent or higher elsewhere in the country, had tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, according to a small population sample.
iPhone | iPad
Android
Huawei
