The government announced this week that it is ramping up its efforts to combat the virus over the weekend by starting a community antibody testing programme, increasing swab testing and doubling its manual contact tracing resources.
Tony Moretta, chief executive of Digital Jersey, confirmed that discussions are also being held about introducing a contact tracing app – including with the technology wing of the NHS.
Such an app would ‘trace’ interactions between smartphone users and alert those who may have been in close contact with someone who has been a confirmed case of Covid-19 infection.
Mr Moretta, who has been seconded to the government during the crisis as an implementation director, said that a tracing app was something that would become useful as lockdown restrictions are eased.
‘On contact tracing it is worth saying that the first step is to increase the ability of the current manual contact tracing,’ he said.
‘So there is going to be a more than doubling of the staff locations they operate from and also an improvement in the technical platform that they are using. That is happening over the next couple of weeks.
‘The tracing app is something for further down the line. We are in conversation with lots of people, including NHSX, and are looking at developments.
‘In the next week or so we will have a better idea of what the Google and Apple specs are. At the moment, we have developed some functional specifications as to what we would like to see in an app in Jersey.’
He added that the next step would be to ‘evaluate the options’ and they would look to use technology being implemented elsewhere.
‘I would say that contact tracing is an area that is still quite hyped at the moment. There are very few places actually using a tracing app at scale,’ he said.
‘NHSX is still piloting theirs and think they are still three weeks away. We are not looking to reinvent the wheel for Jersey and hopefully we can look around and take the best we can find in terms of what we need here.’
Mr Moretta said that he believed there could be opportunities for Jersey as a testbed or case study for testing and tracing programmes because its island status gives it a controlled environment.
‘Michael Gove was talking about the UK’s offshore islands’ advantages and there was a story that they were looking to test the NHSX app on the Isle of Wight,’ he said.
‘He said that because islands can control who is coming in and going out they might be one of the best places to trial monitoring and testing and be the first to start to exit lockdown.’
Steve Skelton, the government’s director of strategy and innovation, agreed that islands had their advantages but said the priority at this time was the health and safety of residents.
‘We have hopefully seen a tailing off in the rate of infections and that is much harder to achieve if you are not in control of who is coming in and out of a place,’ he said.
‘So there are natural benefits from being in small island communities. But going forward, the principle objective is to deal with the pandemic in a way that promotes the health and safety and wellbeing of Islanders.
‘Anything beyond that, we would have to think about at the time.’
