This post was originally published on this site
The U.K. will use Apple AAPL, +0.09% and Google’s GOOGL, -1.17% technology for its coronavirus track-and-trace app after it was reportedly claimed that difficulties launching the government’s own app were due to Apple’s lack of cooperation.
U.K. government officials reportedly accused Apple of prioritizing its commercial interests over public health by refusing to loosen restrictions on the app’s access to key features.
Apple was limiting the app’s access to Bluetooth, which is needed to track contact between users, when the app is closed.
An unnamed senior ministerial source told the Times newspaper that the company wasn’t willing to engage “at senior levels.”
Read:This contact tracing app could become the model to save the world from the spread of coronavirus
The newspaper said Apple denied any conflict with the U.K. government. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
A contact tracing app uses location data or Bluetooth technology to keep track of contacts between people. If somebody tests positive for coronavirus or reports symptoms, the app will tell their contacts to self-isolate and get tested.
Apple and Google’s decentralized data storage is thought to improve privacy, but offers the government less data to study the spread of the virus.
“We will now be taking forward a solution that brings together the work on our app and the Google/Apple solution,” the department for health and social care said in a statement on Thursday.
Only three U.S. states will adopt Apple and Google’s model, 16 states won’t use contact-tracing apps at all, 19 said they were considering an app but had not decided and 11 were unclear, according to a June survey by Business Insider, suggesting a lack of enthusiasm for the technology.
Apple and Alphabet-owned Google’s app framework stores users’ data on their phones, while the U.K.’s app, which had been developed by the technology arm of the country’s health service, would have kept data in a central database.
U.K. health secretary Matt Hancock said: “As we enter this next phase of research and development we remain determined to continue in our ambition to develop an app which meets the technical, security and user needs of the public and which can complement the NHS Test and Trace service.”
The U.K. had been testing its app on an island off its south coast, the Isle of Wight, since May and it was expected to rollout across the country in June as part of what ministers called a ‘world-beating’ test and trace program.
Meanwhile, the government has been manually tracing the contacts of people with coronavirus and between June 4 and June 10, it said 40,690 people were contacted by the health service and asked to self-isolate.
Google and the NHS were contacted for comment.
