I’ve been taking part in a research project since the outbreak of Covid19 using a symptom tracking app that is using techniques that I used to track the SARS virus nearly 20 years ago when I was in the virus “industry”.

It runs on your smartphone and it takes 1 minute of your time a day to anonymously report how you feel and what new symptoms you have. It has successfully been responsible for identifying a change of taste and smell as a symptom of Covid19.

With the government moving ( at last ) to “track and trace” this app will give independent data to check the progress of the disease. It is being used by the Welsh Government, NHS Wales, the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland – but not Health England who are using their own system. It is also being used in other countries by a total of over 3 million people.

You can download the app at https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/covid-symptom-tracker/id1503529611 for Apple devices and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joinzoe.covid_zoe for Android phones.

It is run by Professor Tim Spector 😦 https://covid.joinzoe.com/about ) of King’s College London. He says

Logging your health daily is more important than ever and due to the conflicting and unverifiable data from the government system this app might be of interest to others. With lockdown measures easing, there are plenty of new opportunities for ‘R’ to increase. As the weather improves and children and teachers head back to school, more people will come into contact with one another.

The risk of new COVID hotspots emerging is also likely to increase without adequate monitoring. Our app is a crucial early detection tool to understand if there is a risk of a second wave of the virus. It’s is more important than ever that you keep logging daily using our app to help us to detect new COVID hotspots earlier.

Protect your community as lockdown lifts by reporting for yourself and behalf of your children to stop the spread of new infections quicker. We would also like to encourage you to share the app with schools, parent’s associations, and other organisations within your community. The more of us there are using the app daily, the more accurately and quickly we will be able to identify potential hotspots.

How might I keep my kids safe as they return to school?

As children return to school, we know that parents may be wondering how they can protect their children from COVID. We’ve made sure to cover this topic in one of our latest blog posts. Read our six tips for keeping your children safe as they go back to school.

We encourage all parents to take just 1 minute each day to keep using our app to log on behalf of their children. This data will help us better understand how the virus might affect kids and identify potential COVID hotspots as schools reopen.

New incidence data: are the numbers falling?

Last week we published insights into the number of daily new COVID cases are occurring in England. We have now added daily case estimates for Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, which you can find on our website.

Stay well, Professor Tim Spector