Written question asked by Justin Madders (Labour) on Wednesday, 15 December 2021, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 5 January 2022. It was answered by Maggie Throup (Conservative) on Monday, 10 January 2022 on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care.

NHS: Software

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to update the NHS Covid App to allow differentiation between positive cases from the delta and omicron covid-19 variants.

Answer: The National Health Service (NHS) COVID-19 app cannot currently provide differentiated advice between positive cases of the Delta and the Omicron variants. Where the app notifies an individual that they have had close contact with someone with COVID-19, it provides advice based on the information the user provides about their age and vaccination status. We are currently exploring whether the underlying technology the NHS COVID-19 app uses for contact tracing could enable the app to provide differentiated messages to users based on the probable COVID-19 variant of the person they were recently in close contact with.

Secondary information