Covid-19: Deadline for roll out of UK's tracing app will be missed.

The future of the UK’s much vaunted covid-19 contact tracing app seems uncertain after James Brokenshire, the security minister, said on 21 May that he was “unable to give [a] definitive timeline” on when the app might launch. England’s health and social care secretary, Matt Hancock, had previously said that the app, which started trials on the Isle of Wight in early May, would be widely available by mid-May, but the launch has been repeatedly pushed back. At the daily Downing Street briefing on 21 May Hancock acknowledged that a tracing app would not be ready by 1 June, when England is due to enter the next phase of lockdown easing. John Newton, Public Health England’s director of health improvement, told the briefing, “The test and trace programme has more than one component . . . which is completely independent of the proximity app. They are distinct but complimentary. And it’s perfectly okay, in fact possibly advantageous, to introduce the one before the other.” Contact tracing …