Written question asked by Caroline Lucas (Green Party) on Tuesday, 15 March 2022, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Friday, 18 March 2022 (named day). A holding answer was provided on Friday, 18 March 2022. A substantive answer was provided by Maggie Throup (Conservative) on Monday, 21 March 2022 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.

Contact Tracing: Software

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to continue funding (a) King’s College London’s symptom-tracking Zoe app and (b) Imperial College London’s React-1 Covid monitoring study; for what reasons funding for those studies has been stopped; and if he will make a statement.

Answer: We have now begun a new phase of living with the virus, as outlined in ‘COVID-19 Response: Living with COVID-19’ published on 21 February 2022. The Government will continue monitoring the virus through maintaining surveillance studies such as the Office for National Statistics’ COVID-19 Infection Survey and other data sources, including genomic sequencing. As a result, the Department and the UK Health Security Agency are no longer in a position to fund the ZOE COVID study and REACT-1 study.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 140419
Session: 2021-22
Related items: Coronavirus: Surveys
Monday, 28 March 2022
Written questions
House of Commons; Coronavirus: Surveys
Tuesday, 26 April 2022
Written questions
House of Commons
Subjects: Software Finance Imperial College London King's College London Coronavirus Contact tracing
Link: View this Written question on www.parliament.uk