Covid: Are people turning off contact tracing on NHS test and trace app?

The government has been warned the public could delete their NHS Test and Trace app amid soaring numbers of people receiving notifications to self-isolate.

The number of people in England being told to stay at home by the app has risen by tens of thousands a week in the space of a month.

As more and more people are “pinged” by the app, are people starting to get rid of it to avoid the risk?

One man, who works for a plumbing and heating company, told The Independent colleagues have deleted the app.

“One of our engineers, who is double vaccinated, got pinged and then had to self-isolate. He then said he is deleting the app,” the man, who wished to stay anonymous, told The Independent.

He said he mentioned this to a couple of other colleagues, who said they had also deleted the app “because they couldn’t afford to self-isolate and think they might get pinged if someone next door tests positive”.

Another friend was recently told to self-isolate using the app and said they would delete it in the future, he added.

Another man, who wished to stay anonymous, told The Independent “a number of people” in the building where he works have been told to self-isolate over the past few weeks. He said he was the second person in his group to self-isolate and work from home.

“Most of our work cannot be done from home and my boss likes to see people looking busy,” he told The Independent. “So he suggested that I delete the app so I wouldn’t have to be told to self-isolate again.”

With potentially around 100,000 cases a day expected in the summer, that has led to warnings that millions of people will be “pinged” by the app or ordered to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace if they have been in contact with someone who has Covid-19.

Towards the end of June, when the latest available data is from, more than 218,000 in a week were notified by the app that they had been in “close contact” with a Covid case and had to self-isolate.

This was up by more than 60,000 from the week before – ending 15 June – and more than 100,000 higher than the week before that, which ended 9 June.

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, told the prime minister on Wednesday: “There are already too many stories of people deleting the NHS app – he must have seen those stories – and they are doing it because they can see what’s coming down the track.”

Many social media users have reported deleting the app to avoid notifications.

One caller told LBC earlier this month: “Everyone I speak to is switching off the app.”

A pub boss also told the radio station that he has spoken to people who have received two doses of a Covid vaccine who have decided to switch the app off.

“They feel they’re safe and they don’t want to be inconvenienced by being pinged,” he said.

But professor Christophe Fraser from Oxford University’s Nuffield Department of Medicine, who advises Test and Trace, told Times Radio that usage of the app was at an “all-time high”.

“About 50 per cent of all overall test results, nationally, go through the app,” he said.