The NHS Covid-19 app will be needed for "quite a while" even with a vaccine, a developer behind the technology has said. More than 1.7 million people across England and Wales have been asked to isolate via the app since it launched in September, having been downloaded 21.6 million times in total.
Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own apps. Research by The Alan Turing Institute and Oxford University - which is still subject to peer review - suggests that the app has so far prevented around 600,000 cases.
Wolfgang Emmerich, chief executive for Zuhlke Engineering, one of the firms responsible for supporting development and launch of the app, said the tool has "proven to be quite an important public health instrument" but warned it will