PRESS: UK's Test & Trace app barely used business check-in data - Sky

(Alliance News) - The UK's Test & Trace app for Covid-19 made hardly any use of check-in data ...

Alliance News 5 March, 2021 | 7:00AM
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(Alliance News) - The UK's Test & Trace app for Covid-19 made hardly any use of check-in data from people visiting restaurants, pubs, and hairdressers, Sky News reported on Thursday.

Sky News said it has obtained a confidential report admitting that because the service had not used this data for alerts and contact tracing, it had failed to warn "thousands of people" that they were at possible risk of infection "potentially leading to the spread of the virus".

Moreover, Sky noted that in cases where Covid-19 data was used, public health officials in the UK had "encouraged pubs and restaurants to contact customers directly". This would have breached data protection law and may result in legal action against those businesses.

According to the report, the lack of Test & Trace guidance for local public health teams on using the data resulted in businesses "being asked to, or volunteering, to contact customers and visitors", breaching the General Data Protection Regulation and putting them at risk of possible a possible "legal challenge".

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of Hospitality UK, told Sky: "Our teams worked really hard to capture that data on the understanding that it was going to be used should there be problems.

"To hear that it wasn't used, and in fact we had further restrictions without really any clear evidence that there was a problem with hospitality, is a major cause for concern."

On top of this, Test & Trace didn't make use of the QR code alert system built into the app, which was intended to send alerts to people who checked into venues where outbreaks were reported.

Sky said the report blamed "capacity issues at a local level" for failures since the system, which put the burden of contacting venues to vet check in data or flag high-risk venues to Test & Trace on already overburdened local public health officials.

By Anna Farley; annafarley@alliancenews.com

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