The UK government recently reported that its NHS COVID-19 app is responsible for preventing 600,000 cases of corona virus in Wales and England.
The NHS app was launched in September 2020 and made use of the Apple-Google API’s exposure notification system, something that the UK government said was a key tool in battling against the pandemic. Users were quickly alerted that they had to self-isolate when a case was reported.
The NHS COVID-19 app has seen 21.63 million downloads on Android and iOS, and it became the 2nd top downloaded free app for 2020, representing about 56% of the Wales and England population that owned a smartphone.
The app has alerted 1.7 million individuals to isolate when close contact has been detected to those who tested COVID-19 positive. Alerts were rapid and arrived to the affected individual in just 15 minutes after a positive case was reported.
The World Health Organization estimates that the UK has had 3.9 million infections starting January 3 and ending February 9, which accounted for 112,000 deaths in the region.
