Search
Content type: Examples
In early August, when the UK government announced it was purchasing 90-minute saliva-based COVID-19 tests called LamPORE and 5,000 lab-free machines to process them, supplied by DNANudge, clinical researchers were dismayed to find that there is no publicly available data about the accuracy or performance of these tests. While the tests could be a game-changer by offering rapid, on-the-spot testing with less discomfort for patients, no scientific research was offered to validate the tests, not…
Content type: Examples
Manchester-based VST Enterprises is developing a rapid COVID-19 testing kit intended to help restart stadium sporting events. The results of tests, which fans will take the day before the event they wish to attend and provide results within ten minutes, will be stored in VSTE’s V-Health Passport, a secure mobile phone app into which users enter their name, address, date of birth, phone number, and doctor information, plus a scanned official identity document against which the smartphone can…
Content type: Examples
By mid-July, the UK’s contact tracing system was still failing to contact thousands of people in areas with England’s highest infection rates. In London, with the sixth-highest infection rate in England, only 47% of at-risk people were contacted; in partially locked-down Leicester, the rate was 65%. The govt’s SAGE committee has said that 80% of infected people’s contacts just be contacted and told to self-isolate within 48 to 72 hours for the programme to be effective. Local councils are…
Content type: Examples
Following trials in Leicester, Luton, and Blackburn with Darwen, the UK government will assign teams of health care professionals to more than ten local authorities and offer them Public Health England’s near real-time data on infections and a dedicated team of contact tracers, shifting away from its £10 billion centralised national system run under contract by Serco. As of early August, the Serco scheme was still failing to reach a significant proportion of those who had been in close contact…
Content type: Examples
Human rights experts have accused the home secretary, Priti Patel, of ignoring legal guidance in an attempt to target child asylum seekers who cannot prove they are under 18.
A letter from the Home Office, seen by the Observer, reveals that the government is putting pressure on social workers to speed up the age assessment of unaccompanied minors, and offering to bankroll councils that face legal challenges as a result. The move comes as new evidence shows that hundreds of people were deported…
Content type: Examples
As part of its pandemic-related emergency measures, in April the Scottish government extended the deadline for public bodies to respond to freedom of information requests to 40 days. A month later, it was forced to withdraw the changes after opposition parties on the Scottish parliament's COVID-19 committee voted them down. FoI deadlines will revert to 20 working days, as previously. MSPs also passed an amendment requiring the Scottish government to report to parliament every two months on its…
Content type: Examples
The outsourcing company Serco, which the UK government has contracted to perform contact tracing, accidentally shared the email addresses of almost 300 of the contact tracers it hired when a staff member sent an introductory email and used CC rather than blind CC. Serco does not intend to refer itself to the Information Commissioner's office.
Writer: Ross Hawkins
Publication: BBC
Content type: Examples
Soon after the UK began reopening pubs with the requirement that staff retain customer details in case they are needed later for contact tracing, a woman reported on Twitter that the next day the bartender messaged her on Facebook. The story was picked up by Refinery29 and the Independent, but taken down at her request. On Twitter, numerous women responded to highlight similar experiences.
https://twitter.com/roselyddon/status/1281885086347075588
https://twitter.com/katebevan/status/…
Content type: Examples
The UK had unrealistic expectations for antibody testing; as early as April health secretary Matt Hancock was suggesting that antibody testing could form the basis for immunity passports even though it is still uncertain whether and for how long SARS-CoV-2 confers immunity to further infection. Prime minister Boris Johnson’s enthusiasm for antibody tests, which he called a “game-changer”, led the UK government to pay £16 million up front for tests from two Chinese companies, which proved in…
Content type: Examples
In London, during the UK’s coronavirus lockdown, young black men were stopped and searched by police 21,950 times with no further action taken in 80% of cases. If each individual were searched only once - which may not be the case - that would equate to 30% of all young black males in London. The Metropolitan police increased its use of stop and search during the lockdown, carrying out 43,000 stops in May 2020, more than double the number in May 2019. The Met responded that crime is also not…
Content type: Examples
Britain’s Cabinet Office awarded an £840,000 contract for researching public opinion about government policies, portions of which involved conducting focus groups related to Brexit rather than COVID-19, to Public First, a company owned by two long-term associates of Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove and special advisor Dominic Cummings, without putting the work out to tender. The government used COVID-19 emergency regulations allowing services to be urgently commissioned to justify…
Content type: Examples
Governments in Norway, Britain, Qatar, and India, among others, have had to either drop or remediate the contact tracing apps they’ve released to help combat the coronavirus due to the rush in which they were released. Many had security flaws that risked exposing user data; others pose privacy and security risks due to the amount of data they collect. While the apps may be helpful in countries like South Korea, where the medical infrastructure exists to do mass testing and isolation, digital…
Content type: Examples
All migrants arriving in the UK since June have been ordered to quarantine, but a Border Force source said that little is being done to ensure the rules are followed and some in emergency accommodation are being given vouchers to go to the shops.
Thousands of British tourists returning from France are now being forced to self-isolate for 14 days whilst those it is understood that some of those crossing the Channel on small boats migrants are still going shopping for food.
The Home Office…
Content type: Examples
After ORG asked questions via its legal representative, AWO’s Ravi Naik, the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care agreed to change the period it would retain Test and Trace data from 20 years to eight. Public Health England manager Yvonne Doyle explained that the novelty of COVID-19 was the reason for keeping the data longer, in case PHE needed to get back in touch with those who had tested positive with additional information.
Publication: ZDNet
Writer: Daphne Leprince-Ringuet…
Content type: Examples
In early July the Open Rights Group issued a pre-action legal letter to UK health secretary Matt Hancock and the Department of Health and Social Care saying they have breached requirements under the Data Protection Act 2018 and GDPR by failing to conduct an impact assessment for the Test and Trace system. ORG and its lawyers, AWO, had been asking for details of the DPIA since the beginning of June, a few days after the system was launched. In their response, the DHSC’s lawyers said “there were…
Content type: Examples
Testing for All is helping small employers and individuals access antibody tests by making them available at £42 each out of fear that “testing inequality” could fuel greater financial inequality, as private schools and big businesses have introduced testing to allow pupils and employees to return to school and work but state schools and small businesses are left to rely on the state. Among the employers adopting antibody testing for staff are Credit Suisse, Ocado, and Premier League football,…
Content type: Examples
Premier League football has set up a COVID-19 testing programme that it says should soon allow socially-distanced fans to return to stadiums using technology from a company called Prenetics, which is also delivering testing for the England cricket team. Prenetics’ digital health passport links an individual’s testing history to their mobile phone; a negative result generates a QR code supporters can scan to access venues.
https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11661/12025028/premier-league-…
Content type: Examples
The UK government refused to abolish a coronavirus law even though it was used unlawfully in every one of the more than 50 cases that were prosecuted under it. Among those wrongly prosecuted were a woman who was fined £660 for a crime she hadn’t committed. Schedule 21 of the Coronavirus Act gives the police the power to direct “potentially infectious persons” to a place suitable for screening and assessment, and allows police to take them by force if they refuse, an infraction that attracts a…
Content type: Examples
The work and pensions committee has said that the immigration rules that have left 1 million migrant workers in the UK at risk of destitution because they cannot claim universal credit should be suspended. The “no recourse to public funds rule” has left many foreign nationals facing a choice of stay at home in poverty or risking catching or spreading the virus at work. The exclusionary and opaque rules surrounding universal credit left many people, particularly self-employed workers, without…
Content type: Examples
The pandemic has exacerbated the effects of the “hostile environment” on the UK’s undocumented migrants, many of whom have lost income, are working in unsafe and exploitative conditions, are scared to seek help even though the government has promised there will be no charging or immigration checks in diagnosing or treating COVID-19, and are living in overcrowded conditions.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/29/covid-19-worsening-plight-of-uk-migrants-report-finds and
https://…
Content type: Examples
The UK Government outsourced some of the testing centre work to Deloitte. The contract states that Deloit does not have to share data of positive cases with the UK health authority Public Health England nor to local government authorities. This prevented data sharing that was arguably essential to public health surveillance.
https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/1278259630628618241
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/01/why-is-there-a-delay-in-sharing-covid-19-test-data-…
Content type: Examples
Both COVID-19 mortality and the economic impact of the virus-related closures are disproportionately affecting the UK’s ethnic minorities after taking age and location into account, exacerbating existing inequalities and reversing what had appeared to be progress. There are also concerns about child poverty and the effects on education for children from economically vulnerable families. There are some exceptions, such as the 4% of Indian men and 3% of Indian women who are medical doctors and…
Content type: Examples
Hours before OpenDemocracy filed suit to compel the UK government to release all the contracts governing its deals with a list of technology firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Palantir, and Faculty, the UK government released the contracts. Faculty is being paid more than £1 million to provide AI services for the NHS, and the companies involved in the NHS data store project, including Faculty and Palantir, were originally granted intellectual property rights and were allowed to train…
Content type: Examples
UK police reported to be planning separate contact tracing system
Police forces in the UK are planning their own contact tracing system because they are concerned that giving details to the national contact tracing system would compromise undercover operations and working methods. Options under discussion include having police forces take over all contact tracing for police officers and staff or seconding staff from the NHS test and trace system to police forces. Health officials, however, say…
Content type: Examples
In the three months from March to May 2020 the UK government awarded at least £1.7 billion in contracts to private companies, most of them without a competitive tender process under emergency procurement measures put in place in March. A quarter of the 400 contracts that government departments have published have gone to companies that have not previously carried out government work, and at least seven were worth more than £100 million. The largest that has been published was a £234 million…
Content type: Examples
The app-based track-and-trace system that was supposed to be in place in the UK by June 1 will not be working at full speed until September or October, and the chief executive of Serco, one of the main companies contracted to deliver it, doubted the system would evolve smoothly. Scientists have said that lockdown should not be eased until the track-and-trace system is well-established. Serco is responsible for recruiting 10,000 of the 25,000 contact tracers, and is being paid an initial fee of…
Content type: Examples
Gypsy and Traveller communities in England, especially those living on canals and waterways or in unauthorised roadside encampments, have had no access to sanitation, refuse collection, or water for drinking, cooking, showering, and washing clothes during the coronavirus lockdown. Some local authorities have directed Travellers to public toilets without hand-washing facilities, while others tried to evict them. In addition, conditions like COPD and asthma are more common in Gypsy and Traveller…
Content type: Examples
Within days of the announcement that the UK's new Joint Biosecurity Centre would be run by Tom Hurd, the Home Office's head of counter-terrorism, the government announced that instead it would be moved to the Department of Health and led by Clara Swinson, a senior health official responsible for global and public health. The JBC was intended to assess the pandemic threat on a colour-coded scale similar to that used for terrorism, but public health experts objected that the virus does not behave…
Content type: Examples
Zoom said it would deliver end-to-end encryption as one of a number of security enhancements to its service, but it will only be available to enterprise and business customers whose identity they can verify and not on the free service. The company says it wants to be able to work with law enforcement in case people use Zoom for a "bad purpose". None of Zoom's competitors offer end-to-end encryption.
Source: CNBC
Writer: Jordan Novet
Content type: Examples
Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people in England are 54% more likely than white people to be fined for violations of the coronavirus rules, according to an analysis of data published by the National Police Chiefs' Council showing the racial breakdown of the 13,445 fixed-penalty notices recorded between March 27 and May 11. BAME people were fined at a rate of 26 per 100,000, compared to white people at 16.8 per 100,000; the comparison raised questions as to whether the fines were fairly…