The coronavirus app needs to be proven before we start lifting the lockdown

Editorial: Failure on the app, for whatever reason, would severely damage the government’s testing strategy

The 140,000 or so citizens of the Isle of Wight are being asked to balance their rights to privacy with their health and their duty to serve their country. For they are to be the pilot scheme for the NHS coronavirus tracking app.

Upon their experience and feedback will rest the success of the “test, track, trace” strategy (and its variants in Scotland and Wales) across the whole of the UK – and thus the success in the battle against Covid-19. Never has so much been owed by so many to so few, on the Isle of Wight. (Or at least if the app works.)

The health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, is only one of many ministers lavishing praise on this part of Hampshire, and he is at pains to reassure everyone concerned that there are no threats to civil liberties. The only way in which personal data stored locally on a smartphone would be shared with Big Brother is if the individual wanted to be tested for coronavirus and volunteered to surrender the information.