News just in from the Department for Health who have finally decided to tweak the NHS Covid app to reduce the state of the ping-demic. Unlike what was floated a few weeks ago, the sensitivity hasn’t been changed, however the number of days close contacts are counted for has been reduced:

Currently, for people who input a positive test but are asymptomatic, the app looks for close contacts five days prior to a positive test. This will be updated based on public health advice to look back at contacts two days prior to a positive test.

The change will mean fewer contacts that took place when the positive case was unlikely to be at the peak of their infectiousness are advised to self-isolate, reducing the overall number of notifications sent by the app.

This update does not impact the sensitivity of the app, or change the risk threshold, and will result in the same number of high-risk contacts being advised to self-isolate.

The update doesn’t yet appear to be available in the App Store…