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As the Isle of Wight prepares to trial a phone app that will track COVID-19 infections, we answer some of the main questions.
**How does it work? **
The app uses a phone's bluetooth technology to register contact when people come within 6ft of one another for at least 15 minutes.
If a user develops symptoms of COVID-19, they inform the NHS and an alert is sent to other users they have come in contact with.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps told Sky News the app would be "a fantastic way to ensure that we are really able to keep a lid on this going forward and we don't get that second wave" of
COVID-19
infections.
Contact tracing app to be trialled this week
When does the trial start?
Mr Shapps has said the trial will start this week.
What benefits could there be for the island and other areas that trial the app?
It has previously been suggested that areas trialling the contact tracing app could also have
coronavirus
lockdown measures eased earlier, in an experiment to see how the UK could do the same.
Image:Residents on the Isle of the Wight will trial the coronavirus app this week
**Why has the Isle of Wight been chosen? **
A small island is a good place for such a trial and also for an early easing of lockdown measures - any infections can be more easily traced among the smaller population, and new infections can be more easily kept out. These things would be much more difficult in a place such as Birmingham, for example.
Contact-tracing apps: the problems and potential
**What about the rest of the country? **
Mr Shapps told Sky's Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme:"Later in the month, that app will be rolled out and deployed - assuming the tests are successful, of course - to the population at large."
He added that 50-60% of the population would need to use the app for it to be effective.
What about privacy?
The transport secretary said the app would be "completely confidential" and the identity of those a person came in contact with would not be revealed.
Users will remain anonymous up to the point where they volunteer their own details. They will be asked to hand over some personal details such as a partial postcode, age and gender, but others won't receive this information.
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**What else will be done? **
The government has promised to employ 18,000 contact-tracers by the middle of May, as it pursues the "test, track and trace" strategy it hopes will see the country leave lockdown safety.
Mr Shapps could not say how many of the contact-tracers had already been recruited, but vowed people would be "in place" when the app was ready for UK-wide use.
"As you've seen, people are more than willing to come forward and be incredibly public-spirited when it comes to defeating this as a nation," he added.
He also suggested, in future, those arriving in the UK would be required to download the app as part of stricter rules at airports.
Coronavirus UK tracker: How many cases are in your area – updated daily
**What are the potential problems? **
Labour's shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds told Sophy Ridge on Sunday: "There has to be a strategy for how we can ensure there is a very large take-up of this app, I think it's obvious that we should need to do that."
However, asked if Britons should be compelled to download the app in future, Mr Thomas-Symonds warned: "Not everybody has a smartphone in the first place to which you could download the app.
"What is the government's strategy in relation to that? Secondly, there are also issues around privacy and security.
"There are people for whom location services on their mobile devices are turned off for particular safety reasons and keeping themselves safe."
