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The U.K. will use Apple AAPL, -0.04% and Google’s GOOGL, -1.14% technology for its coronavirus track-and-trace app because Apple won’t to change its system to allow the U.K.’s app to work effectively on iPhones.
“As it stands, our app won’t work, because Apple won’t change the system,” U.K. health secretary Matt Hancock said on Thursday.
Apple does not allow the app to use bluetooth while it is closed, which is needed to track contact between users.
“So we’ve agreed to join forces with Google and Apple to bring the best bits of both systems together,” Hancock said at the government’s daily coronavirus press conference.
The U.K.’s app calculates the distance between contacts, which the Apple and Google option does not, Hancock said. So the U.K. will ‘join forces’ with Apple and Google, sharing its progress so far, and adopting the companies’ platform.
Read:This contact tracing app could become the model to save the world from the spread of coronavirus
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.
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.
The health secretary did not say when the new app would be ready, saying: “We’re not going to put a date on the time frame. Because I’m absolutely determined that whilst this technology can help, it’s got to be working effectively.”
Google and the NHS were contacted for comment.
