The NHS COVID app is closing down – but is the pandemic really over?
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.
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Long Covid: ‘I’m grieving my life’
At one point, her heart rate reached 150bpm when just walking up the stairs.
“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.”
‘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.”
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.
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.”
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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.
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“But we have a responsibility to continue providing healthcare.”
He said people will “always come in with COVID, or problems related to COVID”.
A workman saved a seven-year-old boy from a burning car in the aftermath of a deadly crash caused by a suicidal ex-pilot, an inquest has heard.
The schoolboy’s rescue came following the collision on the M6, which killed former RAF man Richard Woods and four others, in October last year.
Last week a coroner ruled that Woods, 40, took his own life by deliberately driving his Skoda the wrong way down the motorway while drunk and hitting a Toyota Yaris head-on.
The driver of the Toyota, Jaroslaw Rossa, 42, was also killed, along with his two sons, Filip, 15, and Dominic, seven, and his partner Jade McEnroe, 33.
Cockermouth Coroner’s Court heard on Thursday that Ms McEnroe’s son was also in the car but survived after workman Gavin Walsh came to his rescue at the scene, which was near Tebay services in Cumbria.
In a statement to the inquest, Mr Walsh said he was a passenger in a transit van travelling to Scotland when he witnessed the crash.
He jumped out of the vehicle and used a jack to smash the rear windscreen of the Toyota and pulled the boy out of the burning vehicle.
Mr Walsh said: “We really did try, I can assure everyone we did our best. We only had minimal time.
“I saved a life that day and I hope never to witness anything like that again.”
He added that he has never stopped thinking about the boy, and said: “I hope we will meet again one day and I will give you a massive hug.”
At the time, the family were returning to Glasgow from a trip to Legoland in Windsor, Berkshire.
The inquest heard that Wood, who was travelling at a speed of at least 65mph, would have been charged with manslaughter had he survived.
Recording conclusions of unlawful killing, Cumbria assistant coroner Margaret Taylor said: “I found that Jaroslaw, Jade, Filip and Dominic died as a consequence of the unlawful acts of another driver.”
The inquest heard how Mr Woods, from Cambridgeshire, had served a distinguished 14-year career in the RAF and was a flight instructor for BAE Systems at the time of his death.
Jade McEnroe. Pic: Cumbria Constabulary
Dominic and Filip. Pic: Cumbria Constabulary
In Ms Taylor’s record of inquest, Mr Woods was said to have been experiencing “a number of stressors in his life” and had a “history of harmful use of alcohol”.
Following the crash, he was found to be nearly four times over the legal drink-drive limit and a two-thirds empty bottle of gin was found in his car.
On the day of his death, concerns had been raised over his behaviour at a work conference near Preston in Lancashire.
Mr Woods failed to return to his seat after lunch and was later spotted driving erratically and swerving across three northbound carriageway lanes on the M6.
After pulling onto the hard shoulder, he then proceeded to U-turn and drove southward on lane three.
Filip, Dominic and Jaroslaw Rossa. Pic: Cumbria Constabulary
Detective Sergeant Deborah Story, from Cumbria Police, told the inquest that Mr Woods would have been prosecuted on four counts of manslaughter had he lived.
She said hypothetical charges of murder were considered by detectives but not thought appropriate because of a lack of information that Mr Woods knew the family or anything that provided a link between them.
Ms McEnroe’s parents, Marie McEnroe and George McNellis, told the coroner they thought it was “murder”.
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A statement from the mother of Filip and Dominic, and the ex-wife of Mr Rossa, Kamila, was read out at the inquest.
She said Mr Rossa, known as Jarek, was born in Poland where they became a couple and went on to have three boys.
He loved playing computer games and had “lots of friends”, she said, and worked at the Wagamama restaurant in Silverburn, Glasgow.
She said she was “devastated” over the deaths, adding: “Our lives will never be the same.
“I am heartbroken at the passing of my beloved angels Filip and Dominic.”
Marie McEnroe said her daughter, a spa therapist, had been in a relationship with Mr Rossa for about two-and-a-half years.
She said Jade had been a “brilliant mother” to her only child, was “really happy” with Mr Rossa and it was “lovely chaos” when all the boys were playing together.
Ms McEnroe added: “Life changed forever that day”.
Ms Taylor praised the “selfless acts of bravery” from those in the aftermath of the collision, including Mr Walsh, who she said went towards the burning car “without hesitation for his own safety”.
The coroner added: “Without his swift response, Jade’s child would also have perished.”
Addressing the bereaved family members, she said: “Your loss is unimaginable but you have conducted yourself with dignity and I thank you for that. I wish you strength for the future.”
Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org in the UK. In the US, call the Samaritans branch in your area or 1 (800) 273-TALK.
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