The UK death toll from confirmed cases of the new coronavirus has risen to 42,288, an increase of 135, the latest daily figures from the government showed on Thursday. There were 1,218 new cases, meaning the country has passed the glum mark of 300,000 infections.
Meanwhile, today the UK Government announced that Britain will switch to Apple and Google technology for its COVID-19 test-and-trace app, ditching its homegrown system which was not working well enough on Apple’s iPhone.
The test-and-trace programme is key to reopening the country but has been dogged by problems. A smartphone app developed by the National Health Service (NHS) was initially expected to be rolled out nationwide in May but did not materialise.
The decentralised Google-Apple system will benefit from work done on the abortive NHS app, said Dido Harding, head of the test-and-trace programme, and Matthew Gould, chief executive of the health service’s technology unit NHSX.
“We have agreed to share our own innovative work … with Google and Apple, work that we hope will benefit others, while using their solution to address some of the specific technical challenges identified through our rigorous testing,” Harding and Gould said in a joint statement.
