For more than two years, the NHS COVID App dictated the lives of those living in the UK – it told us which counties were safe to travel into, who people could spend Christmas with, and how close the public could get to their loved ones.
But now, on Thursday 27 April 2023 it is being switched off for the final time.
No more “getting pinged“, or needing a bar code to enter a restaurant. The app is estimated to have saved thousands of lives and stopped millions of infections but now the fight against the virus enters a new phase and it is no longer needed.
Germany’s health minister has already declared the pandemic over, while the US president has signed a bill terminating the country’s national emergency response to the virus.
But while some may hail it as another step on the road to the end of the pandemic, for half a million clinically vulnerable people in the UK, COVID can still be life-threatening.
From tennis prodigy to long COVID sufferer
Three years ago, Tanysha Dissanayake was a tennis prodigy who played alongside Emma Radacanu in junior Wimbledon.
Then the COVID virus forced her into early retirement, and out of education: “It was stripped away from me overnight,” she said.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:42
Long Covid: ‘I’m grieving my life’
At one point, her heart rate reached 150bpm when just walking up the stairs.
Advertisement
“I have come a long way since a year ago. A year ago I couldn’t even open my eyes to watch Netflix,” Tanysha said.
“But in terms of my life, and my full recovery, I am still so far away from where I need to be.”
The virus has left her unable to study, read and socialise and grieving the loss of her former, very active, life.
“I can’t walk more than 2m, I need my little brother to push me around in a wheelchair,” she said.
“That was not a life I was ever prepared for. I was 19 and healthy.”
How the NHS COVID app came to dominate British life
The app was touted as an integral part of the UK’s Test and Trace but experienced a series of setbacks prior to its launch.
Development began in March 2020, but after an initial trial run on the Isle of Wight in May 2020, the first version of the app was abandoned due to technical failings.
The government announced it would work with Apple and Google to develop a new version of the app. This was finally launched to the wider public in September 2020 and was downloaded more than 21 million times, with 1.7 million users advised to self-isolate following close contact with someone with COVID.
At the height of the “pinging”, businesses complained it was causing severe staff shortages and unnecessary chaos, but expert analysis found the app to largely be effective in telling people to self-isolate. It was eventually tweaked to ‘”ping” fewer people.
It soon became integral to British pandemic life – it was needed to board flights, enter bars and restaurants, and store essential COVID vaccine information.
The cost of the app was estimated to top £35 million.
‘I feel forgotten – people have moved on without me’
She is now worried about the disappearance of the official NHS COVID app and what it means for her to be able to interact in public.
“It scares me so much,” she said, adding that she is terrified to catch the virus again, fearing it could set back her recovery by another year.
“I can understand needs and wants to move on from COVID, because it was a traumatic thing for everyone, but people are forgetting about it, and it’s being labelled as something that’s not dangerous at all,” she said.
Now 21, she said she feels she is “stuck as a 19 year old”.
It takes her up to a week to prepare to leave the house.
Tanysha added: “My life has been on hold for two years and people have moved on without me and I am still here.”
Image: Digital COVID passes were used to enter bars, restaurants and board planes
‘I thought the app had already closed down’
Although hospital levels are not the same as they were during the peak of the pandemic, for patient Nicola Macarty, any new infection could kill her.
The 59-year-old got COVID for the second time last week and collapsed in the shower, unable to breathe.
“People are still very ill with COVID,” she said, speaking from her hospital bed.
But she was unaware the app had still been operating until this point.
Image: Nicola Macarty is currently in hospital with COVID
“I honestly thought the app had gone years ago,” she said. “I didn’t realise the app was still there.”
But for Imogen Dempsey, who is clinically ill, the end of the app feels like an effort to ignore the realities of the new phase of the pandemic.
“Everybody is tired and fed up and could do without having to talk about COVID anymore,” she said.
“[But] for people like me, the fact that we still need to think about being so careful and our lives are still so much on hold, absolutely we’d like things to be different – but they’re not.
“COVID hasn’t gone away, and stopping recording it and trying to ignore it isn’t actually a public health strategy.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
4:26
How the app was tweaked to ping fewer people
COVID wards still operating
Frimley Health still operates specific COVID wards, first introduced in 2020 in a bid to stop patients from spreading the infection around the hospital.
John Seymour, deputy medical director at Frimley Health, said: “Living with COVID is an acceptance it is here, it will always be here.
Image: Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk. Pic: Reuters
Image: Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo (right) arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva. Pic: PA
Jota, 28, leaves behind his wife of only 11 days, Rute Cardoso, and three young children.
His younger brother, 25, was an attacking midfielder for Penafiel in the second tier of Portuguese football.
Liverpool manager Arne Slot, captain Virgil Van Dijk and teammates including Andy Robertson, Conor Bradley, Ryan Gravenberch, Cody Gakpo, Curtis Jones, Darwin Nunez and Joe Gomez were seen at the service.
More from World
Former teammates Jordan Henderson, James Milner and Fabinho were also there.
Van Dijk carried a red wreath with Jota’s number 20, while Robertson had a wreath featuring number 30, Silva’s number at Penafiel.
Image: Manchester United and Portugal player Bruno Fernandes. Pic: PA
Image: Liverpool’s captain Virgil van Dijk and Liverpool’s player Andrew Robertson. Pic: Reuters
Some of Jota’s teammates in the Portuguese national side also attended, including Bruno Fernandes, of Manchester United, Ruben Dias and Bernardo Silva, of Manchester City, Joao Felix and Renato Veiga, of Chelsea, Nelson Semedo, from Wolves, Joao Moutinho and Rui Patricio.
Ruben Neves was one of the pallbearers after flying in from Florida where he played for Al Hilal in the Club World Cup quarter-final on Friday night.
‘More than a friend’
In a post published on Instagram before the service, he told Jota he had been “more than a friend, we’re family, and we won’t stop being that way just because you’ve decided to sign a contract a little further away from us!”
Jota’s fellow Liverpool midfielder, Alexis Mac Allister, said on Instagram: “I can’t believe it. I’ll always remember your smiles, your anger, your intelligence, your camaraderie, and everything that made you a person. It hurts so much; we’ll miss you. Rest in peace, dear Diogo.”
Instagram
This content is provided by Instagram, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Instagram cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Instagram cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Instagram cookies for this session only.
Porto FC president Andre Villas-Boas and Portugal national team manager Roberto Martinez were also in attendance.
‘With us forever’
Speaking after the ceremony, Martinez said the period since their deaths had been “really, really sad days, as you can imagine, but today we showed we are a large, close family.
“Their spirit will be with us forever.”
The service was private, but the words spoken by the Bishop of Porto, Manuel Linda, were broadcast to those standing outside the church.
He told Jota’s children, who were not at the service, that he was praying for them specifically, as well as their mother and grandparents.
“There are no words, but there are feelings,” he said, adding: “We also suffer a lot and we are with you emotionally.”
The brothers died after a Lamborghini they were travelling in burst into flames following a suspected tyre blowout in the early hours of Thursday morning.
No other vehicles are said to have been involved in the incident.
Liverpool have delayed the return of their players for pre-season following Jota’s death and players past and present paid tribute to him and his brother on social media.
Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.
MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.
Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
6:36
Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.
“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.
More on Rachel Reeves
Related Topics:
“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.
“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”
Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.
The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.
Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”
In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.
“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.
“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”
The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.
Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.
Image: Diogo Jota’s wife Rute Cardoso arrives for the funeral of him and his brother Andre Silva. Pic: Reuters
Image: Liverpool players Virgil van Dijk and Andrew Robertson arrive for the funeral. Pic: Reuters
Image: Van Dijk carried a wreath with Jota’s number 20 while Andrew Robertson’s had a 30 for Andre Silva. Pic: Reuters
Image: Liverpool captain Virgil van Dijk. Pic: Reuters
Image: Portugal player Ruben Neves arrives at the funeral. Pic: PA
Image: Liverpool’s Joe Gomez and manager Arne Slot arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva. Pic; PA
Image: Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch and Cody Gakpo (right) arrive at the funeral of Diogo Jota and Andre Silva
Image: Manchester City and Portugal player Bernardo Silva arrives at the funeral. Pic: AP
Image: The coffins are carried to the church. Pic: PA
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:27
Miguell Rocha played with Jota for around ten years with Gondomar Sport Clube in Portugal.
Image: People line up to enter the church. Pic: AP
Image: Pallbearers carry the coffins of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva
Image: Pic: Reuters
Image: Pic: AP
Image: People gather outside the Chapel of the Resurrection. Pic: Reuters
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:22
The former captain was seen wiping away tears as he read messages and laid his tribute down.
Image: Fans pay their respects outside Anfield in Liverpool. Pic: Reuters
Image: A board with a picture of Diogo Jota outside Anfield Stadium. Pic: PA
Image: The coffins are carried to the church. Pic: PA