Our government haven’t been performing too brilliantly of late. An exams disaster, a police-enforced border around Kent, MP’s telling us to stop moaning about a lack of COVID-19 tests and a willingness to break the law whilst telling the public not to. It’s not cricket, is it?
Our blame-shifting Prime Minister recently stated that our semi-functioning COVID-19 Track and Trace system doesn’t work as well as other countries because people in the UK are “more free”.
Meanwhile Dido Harding, the NHS Test and Trace boss and disastrous ex-CEO of TalkTalk, revealed that up to 750,000 requests for COVID-19 tests were going unanswered every day. She also complained that her team couldn’t have “foreseen” the increase in demand for tests, despite the government telling schools, universities, colleges to re-open and workers to go back to their offices many weeks earlier.
Anyways.. the NHS COVID-19 app is now out of beta and you can download the live app. Maybe it’ll work, maybe it’ll explode in a ball of flames. From what we’ve seen though, it works quite well.
It’s available here for Android and here for iOS. You can get more information on the NHS website too.
It’s designed to inform you if you’re at risk from Coronavirus and runs on software developed by Apple and Google. You can find out when you’ve been near other app users who have tested positive for coronavirus, plus it’ll tell you the alert level of your local area and you can check-in at venues – this will then be stored so that you’re informed if there’s been a case there. This replaces the existing form-filling that you may have done at pubs and restaurants.
The app also lists symptoms to look out for, plus you can book tests and find out how long you’ll need to self-isolate for.
It’s all very easy to use – just fire it up, put the first part of your postcode in and you’re done.