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 “technical issue” at British Airways has delayed flights, reportedly for thousands of passengers.
Travel journalist Simon Calder said on X: “British Airways IT system failure is causing delays of 1-2 hours on many BA flights this evening… As delays build up I fear there will be cancellations tonight/tomorrow.”
In a statement on Monday evening, British Airways said flights were “currently operating, but are experiencing delays” and that its teams were working to “resolve a technical issue affecting some of our systems”.
Later they said it had been resolved: “Our teams worked hard to resolve an issue we experienced for a short time earlier this evening.
“We’ve apologised to customers for delays to their flights and ensured they were able to reach their destinations as planned.”
Earlier media reports suggested dozens of flights were grounded and that communications systems were affected.
One X user pictured people queueing on the tarmac in Verona, Italy. “What has happened to the nations airline? Not fit for purpose,” they said.
Replying to another X user BA said: “Our website is down. We are doing all we can to return online as soon as possible.
“Hopefully not too long before the Captain has his load sheet. Thanks for your understanding. Have a good journey when it is safe for you to be airborne.”
A spokesperson for Heathrow Airport said: “We are aware of a technical issue that British Airways are investigating, and we will be working with them to provide updates to passengers as soon as they are available. Heathrow systems are operating as normal.”
In June many British Airways (BA) flights in Heathrow were delayed by several hours by a “technical fault” with baggage handling.
BA said there had been a “temporary technical fault” which had disrupted its baggage system at the airport and had apologised for the problems it caused.
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In January “intermittent issues” with the airline’s app and website meant customers could not access them.
BA’s customer score for long-haul flights was the joint third lowest out of 17 carriers analysed by Which? in February.
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