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The new boss of the contact-tracing app has only taken the job for six months, Sky News has learned, raising concerns about the rapid turnover of executives at the top of the troubled Test and Trace programme.
Gaby Appleton, a director of academic publishing company Elsevier, was revealed by Sky News last week as the new head of the NHS COVID-19 app, which operates in England and Wales.

She is the third person to lead the app team in the last six months. None of the three heads have a background in public health.
The news that Ms Appleton was on a six-month secondment to Test and Trace was not made public when her appointment was confirmed, despite being announced to her colleagues at Elsevier almost a month ago, according to internal emails seen by Sky News.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson confirmed that Ms Appleton, who has been given the role of director of product for Test and Trace, was on secondment “initially for six months”.

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The news that one of the most senior executives in Test and Trace is on a short-term contract may raise questions about the programme’s leadership, which has been sharply criticised following falls in the number of possible carriers of coronavirus it manages to contact.

People told to self-isolate stopped from claiming £500 grant

Senior Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin broke ranks on Sunday to call on Test and Trace boss Dido Harding to step down, saying there was a “vacuum of leadership” that was “destroying co-operation and compliance”.

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Sir Bernard told Sky News: “There is a sense that there is a lack of overall strategy that is at the heart of the problem.”
One Test and Trace source expressed frustration at the constant change at the top of the organisation by comparing it to the World War Two effort to crack German encryption, known as Enigma.
“This is perhaps the most complicated and time-pressured data management problem since Enigma,” the source said.
“Do you think the Allies would have deciphered the Nazi code if the leadership of MI6 changed on a monthly basis?”
Ms Appleton, who started work last week, has taken over from Simon Thompson, the former Apple executive who was appointed to run the programme in June, just before the first contact tracing app was ditched after it encountered technical problems.
Sky News understands that Mr Thompson took the role while he was on gardening leave from his previous job at online supermarket Ocado.
Last month it was reported that former Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe would take a key role overseeing testing at Test and Trace, but would only be in the role until Christmas.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “NHS Test and Trace has a leadership team, drawn from the military, public and private sectors, who have built the largest diagnostic industry the UK has ever seen.
“It is the equivalent of building an operation the size of Tesco in a matter of months.

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“Gaby Appleton’s role as director of product for NHS Test and Trace, which will have responsibility for the COVID-19 app, has been created to help enhance and run the app now it has been fully launched.
“The appointment is initially for six months and we will always ensure there is a strong leadership team in place for NHS Test and Trace.”
Although the app has been downloaded more than 18m times, its functionality has received widespread criticism, with complaints that it sends “false alarms” telling people they have been near someone with coronavirus.
Sky News revealed last week that people told to self-isolate by the app were not able to claim the £500 support payment for low-paid workers, even if they were eligible for it.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said both issues were being reviewed and that it was “actively exploring” ways to allow low-paid workers to claim payment from the app.

Astronauts can lose as much as 10% of bone density during six months in space, according to NASA, because there’s no gravity for their body to push against.
To offset the effect, they exercise for two hours a day, at least six days a week. But a London engineer says a machine he invented could reduce those gruelling workouts to just six minutes a day, by enabling astronauts to jump in zero gravity.

“It allows a person, when they’re repeatedly jumping, to load their skeletal system, their bones then start to lay down more bone density and more to the point prevent astronauts losing their bone density and muscle mass,” inventor John Kennett, who used to work on the Concorde aircraft programme, says.

Image: The new equipment could cut the time needed for astronauts to spend exercising by 95%. Pic: Leo Wilkinson Photography
“Nothing exists like this at the moment. Jumping is really important for helping to build bone density and muscle mass, but jumping in zero gravity is very difficult,” he adds.
His High Frequency Impulse for Microgravity machine has won grants from the UK and European Space Agencies.

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Image: John Kennett hopes to see the device taken aboard a mission by 2024. Pic: Leo Wilkinson Photography
Experts say the key advantage is that it is a single device that could replace several which astronauts currently use, which could be crucial in long, deep space missions where every inch of the craft will be packed with supplies and equipment.

“We’re not going to have the room or the mass or the ability to bring different exercise devices there,” says Libby Jackson, human exploration programme manager at the UK Space Agency.

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Image: Mr Kennett using his new invention. Pic: Leo Wilkinson Photography
“The machine that John has designed excited me because when I looked at it I could see that it had the potential to combine the cardio and the muscle conditioning that’s needed for astronauts to stay fit and healthy in a small footprint,” she adds.
Former NASA astronaut Leroy Chiao says that keeping fit in space is central to ensuring a successful recovery back on Earth, but he would welcome shorter workouts which could free up those on board to have more time for their core duties.
“We’d like to use as much of the time as possible for research work and of course there are maintenance repairs logistics work that has to be done as well, so two hours a day for exercise is a pretty big overhead,” he adds.

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Mr Kennett says his machine has different settings so that it works equally well for both men and women.
King’s College London aerospace physiology PHD student Tess Morris-Paterson, who is one of those testing the device, says the short, intense workout gives her a full body benefit.
“When you’re jumping on this you can really feel it from your toes right through your shoulders, your bone mineral density right through your ankle, your knees, your hips, right through your spine as well, and from a muscular perspective you can really feel it working almost everything really,” she says.
Next year, Mr Kennett’s team will test the machine on board a zero-gravity flight.
He hopes to see it in use on a space mission in 2024.

Falling rates of COVID-19 among students could be masking an underlying epidemic, research by Sky News has revealed.
The Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said this week that Tier 3 restrictions were unnecessary because cases in the city were falling.

Our analysis suggests that’s true when looking at city-wide data. But in fact, the downward trend appears to be because of a sharp fall in cases in areas with a higher density of students.

In other parts of the city, which are likely to have a greater proportion of elderly people at risk of more serious disease, cases are still rising.
That will be a serious concern for hospitals that are increasingly stretched by the combination of COVID-19 and other winter illnesses.

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We looked at small grids of the city called Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOA), each of which are home to just a few thousand people. It is as granular as you can go when studying the epidemic.

Across the city, cases began to climb at the start of September. When students arrived in the middle of the month, there was an explosion of cases in those MSOAs containing university halls of residence.

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But cases have fallen almost as quickly as they rose, almost certainly because thousands of students were forced to isolate and the virus burned itself out.
Meanwhile, other areas of the city have seen slow and steady rises in cases.
So far there is no sign that measures such as the rule of six, which dates back to 14 September, have had any effect.

The pattern is mirrored in Sheffield, with a sharp rise and fall in infections in MSOAs with halls of residence in them. But once again, cases are still steadily rising elsewhere in the city.
In Nottingham and Liverpool, rates in university areas also hit a high peak when students returned, and are now falling. There are signs that infection rates are also easing off in non-student areas, though far more slowly.

Our findings underline how important it is to look not just at the headline city-wide number of cases, but also at who is becoming infected. Otherwise local lockdowns could be imposed, or lifted, too soon.
Manchester and Liverpool are already under tight Tier 3 controls, Sheffield will be under the strict measures from Saturday, and talks between the government and local leaders are continuing about Nottingham also entering the highest level of controls.

People told to isolate by the contact-tracing app are not able to claim government financial support, Sky News has learned, raising fears that low-paid workers will be forced to choose between health and hardship.
A leading poverty charity said the situation was “ridiculous” and Labour accused the government of putting families at risk of destitution.

Workers with low incomes on benefits are entitled to receive £500 if they cannot work from home while they self-isolate.
But a hidden flaw in the process for claiming the payment means they can only claim the support if they are given a code by a human contact tracer.
Someone who tests positive for coronavirus and receives their result through the app can get the payment because they will be referred to NHS Test and Trace for manual contact tracing by telephone call.

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But anyone who is told to isolate by app because they have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 cannot claim the payment, even if they are entitled to it because the app’s privacy-protecting design means their identity remains secret.

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Contact tracing apps could be one way of reducing COVID – but only if it works

The news comes despite claims by the health secretary the “button is there on the app” to let people claim the payment.

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Sky News has confirmed that no such button exists, leaving low-paid workers at risk of missing out on crucial financial support.
Test and Trace sources say that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) developed a plan for such a system at least two weeks ago.
But the feature, which would have allowed users to exit the app to make a claim, was not added, even though the app was rapidly gaining users. It has now been downloaded more than 18 million times, according to DHSC.

Contact tracing app gets third boss in six months

Asked why Mr Hancock claimed the button existed when it did not, a DHSC spokesperson said that he had been referring to manual contact tracing.
It is not known how many people have been affected by the issue, but Labour MP Rachael Maskell said the public health team in her York Central constituency were “inundated” with claims, and that the situation was “creating chaos” for local councils.
Jonathan Reynolds MP, shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, told Sky News: “Complying with instructions to self-isolate should not push people and their families into hardship.
“Everyone wants to do the right thing and they should be enabled to self-isolate when required through financial support where it is needed.”

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Anna Stevenson of national poverty charity Turn2Us warned that without financial support people on low incomes would struggle to self-isolate.
“We all know that we need people to self-isolate and yet if they are told to self-isolate by a phone line they get support to do it and if they get told to self-isolate by an app, they don’t,” she said. “It is ridiculous.”
The £500 payment for low-paid workers asked to take time off work was a central part of the government’s plan to encourage self-isolation, introduced after studies suggested that less than 20% of people in England isolated when asked to do so by contact tracers, mainly for financial reasons.
Yet although the contact tracing app was launched on 26 September, two days before the new law on self-isolation came into force, sources working on the app say the two systems were never connected.

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A solution was drawn up by the app team and approved by NHS Test and Trace and Public Health England (PHE) at least two weeks ago, the source said, but work on the plan was held up because the Cabinet Office and Downing Street were concerned about the risk of fraud.
A Department of Health spokesperson told Sky News: “The NHS Covid-19 app is voluntary with users of it remaining anonymous, which means that currently, people are not eligible for the support payment if they are advised by the app to self-isolate because they have had close contact with someone who has tested positive.”
The spokesperson added: “We are actively exploring ways to expand the payment scheme to include this group of users.”
Steve Barclay, chief secretary to the Treasury, told Sky News “I wasn’t aware of that specific issue” but reiterated the support for those told to self-isolate.
He added the app was “easy to use” and claimed “it’s been very effective”.
Following a change in the law in England, it is now illegal for anyone told to self-isolate by Test and Trace to fail to do so. This does not apply to instructions from the app, which are advisory, not legally enforceable.
In order to be eligible for the self-isolation payment, workers need to be employed or self-employed, unable to work from home, and able to prove that they will lose income as a result of being forced to stop work.
They also need to be receiving one of a number of benefits, including Universal Credit and income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance.

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The prime minister confessed admits ‘frustrations’ with Test and Trace

According to official statistics, just under four million workers in England were eligible for the payment, although this number may be rising as more people struggle to find work.
The amount of people receiving Universal Credit has almost doubled since February, jumping from 2.9 million to 5.7 million, despite extensive government support.
Test and Trace figures released Thursday show that less than 60% of close contacts of people who tested positive for coronavirus in England are being reached – the lowest weekly percentage since the service began.
And just 15% of people tested for COVID-19 in England at an in-person site are receiving their result within 24 hours.
In a Downing Street news conference, Boris Johnson confessed to “frustrations” with the system and admitted there is a need to “improve” it.

Remdesivir, an antiviral drug originally developed to treat Ebola, has been approved for use on COVID-19 patients in the US.
The treatment, which is given through an IV in hospital, was signed off by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

It is thought to prevent SARS CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) from multiplying in the body, with some patients recovering faster after using it.
President Donald Trump is the most high-profile coronavirus patient known to have been treated with remdesivir – he received it while recovering from his infection at Walter Reed Military Hospital in Maryland.

Image: Donald Trump received remdesivir while being treated at the Walter Reed Medical Center
It had been authorised for use in the US on an emergency basis since spring, after which it bought up almost the entire world’s supply, but has now become the first drug to win full approval in the country for treating COVID-19.

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This is despite a global study by the World Health Organisation finding last week that remdesivir did not help patients survive or recover faster.

However, a study by the US National Institutes of Health found the drug cut the time to recovery by five days – from 15 days to 10 on average.

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California-based developer Gilead Sciences, which is calling the drug Veklury, said it is approved for people at least 12 years old and weighing at least 40 kilograms (88lb) who need hospital admission for their coronavirus infection.
Gilead began research on remdesivir in 2009 as part of studies into hepatitis C and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common and highly contagious respiratory virus that most children get before they turn two.

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‘Catching coronavirus was blessing from God’

In May, the drug was approved for use in the UK, clearing it to be prescribed for some adults and teenagers.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock hailed the development as the “biggest step forward in the treatment of coronavirus since the crisis began”.
The EU has also authorised its use for COVID-19 treatment only.