The NHS Test and Trace (NHST&T) app was a key part of the UK government’s efforts to get through the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet a report published by the Public Accounts Committee on 27 October painted a damning picture about what it really achieved.
A brief history of the app
The government awarded the app £37 billion to spend over two years , an amount equal to almost 20% of the NHS England budget in 2020. The hope was that the app would trace back the movements of those infected with the virus to identify who they’d been in contact with and ask them all to isolate, with the aim of curtailing the disease’s spread.
Instead, the country went on to experience two national lockdowns and another rise in cases since the expensive app was launched. In fact, the team didn’t even manage to spend all of the £8.7 billion it was given in the first year, and the money it did spend largely went to highly-paid consultants.
What went wrong?
The report
According to the findings from the Public Accounts Committee, the app may have directed its focus to the wrong outcomes. It distributed almost 700 million lateral flow devices to test for COVID-19, yet only 14% of them were actually registered on the app — meaning that most people with the disease were tested but not traced.
To make matters worse, in December 2020, only 17% of people were even able to receive a test. The resources were there, but NHST&T simply didn’t use a large portion of them. It’s also suspected that many people simply didn’t act on the results they had since there weren’t the right frameworks in place.
Looking toward winter
As we approach the winter — the UK’s deadliest season for disease — it seems that Covid cases are likely to rise. NHST&T and the government need to learn from the results of this report, and fast. It’s a situation that everyone in the country is anticipating and monitoring.