UK switches to use Apple-Google contact-tracing model

According to BBC News, the UK government intends to shift to the Apple-Google decentralised contact-tracing model instead of developing its own centralised model. The National Health Services (NHS) has been testing both centralised and decentralised systems. While the centralised version, which was piloted in the Isle of Wight, successfully measured the distance between two phones, its performance was poor on Apple’s iPhones. The Apple-Google decentralised model, on the other hand, logged 99% of both Android smartphones and iPhones, but the distance calculations were poorer. UK’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock said that the original plan to use a centralised approach would not work due to Apple’s restrictions on the use of Bluetooth by third party apps. The government is reported to launch an app in the fall of 2020.