ArticleNature communications2023
Epidemiological impacts of the NHS COVID-19 app in England and Wales throughout its first year.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Quantifying Heterogeneous Impacts of Geolocated mHealth Tracing on Spatiotemporal Transmission of Emerging Infections.GeoHealth · 2026Article
- Characteristics Influencing Support for the National Health Service COVID-19 App in England and Wales: Findings From a Longitudinal Survey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Cool Solutions in Hot Times: The Case for Digital Health in Heatwave Action Plans.Online journal of public health informatics · 2025Article
- Contact tracing strategies for infectious diseases: A systematic literature review.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Identifying Barriers to the Adoption of Digital Contact Tracing Apps in England: Semistructured Interview Study With Professionals Involved in the Pandemic Response.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Estimating the contribution of setting-specific contacts to SARS-CoV-2 transmission using digital contact tracing data.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions to reduce COVID-19 transmission in the UK: a rapid mapping review and interactive evidence gap map.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2024Review
- Population and contact tracer uptake of New Zealand's QR-code-based digital contact tracing app for COVID-19.Epidemiology and infection · 2024Article
- Article
- Evaluation of the effectiveness of Washington State's digital COVID-19 exposure notification system over one pandemic year.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Combatting SARS-CoV-2 With Digital Contact Tracing and Notification: Navigating Six Points of Failure.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2023Review
- Lessons identified for a future pandemic.The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy · 2023Article
- Personal Information Protection and Privacy Policy Compliance of Health Code Apps in China: Scale Development and Content Analysis.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2023Review
- Individual level analysis of digital proximity tracing for COVID-19 in Belgium highlights major bottlenecks.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- Epidemiological impacts of the NHS COVID-19 app in England and Wales throughout its first year.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Human judgement forecasting of COVID-19 in the UK.Wellcome open research · 2023Article
- Source identification via contact tracing in the presence of asymptomatic patients.Applied network science · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The NHS COVID-19 app was launched in England and Wales in September 2020, with a Bluetooth-based contact tracing functionality designed to reduce transmission of SARS-CoV-2. We show that user engagement and the app's epidemiological impacts varied according to changing social and epidemic characteristics throughout the app's first year. We describe the interaction and complementarity of manual and digital contact tracing approaches. Results of our statistical analyses of anonymised, aggregated app data include that app users who were recently notified were more likely to test positive than app users who were not recently notified, by a factor that varied considerably over time. We estimate that the app's contact tracing function alone averted about 1 million cases (sensitivity analysis 450,000-1,400,000) during its first year, corresponding to 44,000 hospital cases (SA 20,000-60,000) and 9,600 deaths (SA 4600-13,000).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.