As lockdowns have put economies around the world into deep freeze, solutions that would have been dismissed as too invasive of citizens' privacy are now getting a hearing
of "immunity wristbands" as a way of identifying those who might be resistant to the disease.
"Parliament, in a sense, shouldn't make the mistake of looking at something now, deciding it's in the public interest, therefore making it lawfully possible without time-limiting that," warned England's Biometrics Commissioner Paul Wiles. Hancock said that those who became unwell with the symptoms of coronavirus would be able securely to tell the new NHS app. The app would then send an alert anonymously to other app users that they had been in significant contact over the past few days with someone infected with the virus.
"Using tracking of that kind to try and halt the spread of coronavirus. That's one thing. Using that tracking all the time, because you just fancy tracking where everybody's going, well that's very different," he said, while also stressing there do not appear to be any signs of the U.K. government seeking a broader reach.
Hancock's other suggestion earlier this month that the government is "looking at introducing something like an immunity certificate or maybe a wristband that says 'I’ve had [coronavirus] and I’m immune and I can’t pass it on and I’m highly unlikely to catch it’" appears to be further off from being realized.designed to establish whether a person has already had the infection. But it was forced to scrap the tests after it emerged they were not sufficiently accurate.
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