Contacted by nhs app - but not been anywhere

[Chairlove]

I was contacted by tye NHS app to say I have been in contact with someone and need to isolate.

I am puzzled as I have been so careful and socially distance. I understand that the app contacts you if you have been in contact with someone who has tested positive in 48 Period and contact over 15 minutes with someone closer than 2 metres.

Since Tuesday night I only went out the house once to go to the shop, where I was the only customer, and wore a mask and distanced. I then went to work on Friday driving in my car.

I work in a hospital, but office based in a building away from hospital. I wear a mask, socially distanced and wash hands etc. I only left to go to the csnteen for food in the main building. Again socially distanced wearing a mask.

I am confused where my contact was? We are told to turn off tracing in ward areas. But I didn’t go near them. Now isolating and working at home. Laptop droppped off.

Where was my risk. I actively avoid people. Depressing.

Are there other people in the office you work in?

If you were in the shop or canteen for longer than fifteen minutes? Presumably there was a cashier at both? The app doesn't know if you were wearing a mask or not so I'm not sure that would make a difference. It might not be accurate at detecting the extact distance, too.

Someone in the next office? Opposite side of the wall but within 2 meters?

And that's why I don't have the app.

I think it’s becoming clear it’s not really fit for purpose. My parents went out for lunch last week, both used the app on their phones, one has recived notifications and the other hasn’t.

Totally social distanced at all times and mask. No one else at work has been contacted. Even the person a had a socially distanced lunch with. I have no symptoms and ironically got a test as part of trial I am doing on Friday

It will be the canteen

DS has had a contact, no idea where he got it and no interest in finding out. What's wrong with him!?

He only goes to work in an office, so presumably there. Why wasn't he contacted by work though, rather than the app?

Surely everyone is wearing masks then how come we need to isolate for chance passings?

This is one of the reasons I don’t have the app.

Did you have your phone with you at all times? This is one of the reasons I’ve never downloaded the app - I don’t trust it to be 100% correct and it’s too disruptive to me if it’s not.

How long do you have to self isolate for? If you subtract that number from 14 you will know the day of contact.

I've also been told to self isolate by the app. I got the app to sign into places, rather than having to use their pen! Must have turned on contact scanning and forgot to turn it off. I immediately felt guilty as I'd been to a bar 2 days before, late afternoon, we left before other customers arrived. I then realised that the contact must have been days earlier than that. I think it was travelling to work on a train. I go from a city to a town but we pass through a station serving 2 universities. The students who get on would only have been on with me for 10 minutes but there are lots of them.

So I've spent the last few days finding out as much as I can. It seems with the latest update to fix the false/disappearing notifications, that the contact criteria rating has been dropped considerably from 900 points to 120 points. So it maybe that say 6 or 8 students standing in the aisle while I was in the window seat would if they were positive had added up to enough points to trigger the app. I wear PPE at work and am very careful, but work don't want me back until my self isolation is up.

I have deleted the app because I have thought about it (non-stop). What it doesn't do is make distinctions between people on age, health, gender, ethnicity, hygiene standards etc. So it will pick a healthy, super scrupulous mask-wearing, hand-washing person as much as a person statistics show is more vulnerable to catching the virus.

Washing your hands and wearing a mask won’t make a difference to the app.

All it means is your phone has been close to someone else’s phone and that person has since registered a positive test.

It probably isn’t sensitive enough to measure 2m exactly, and probably can pick up other phones through stud wall, round corners and through Perspex.

You have been out and about a bit and I assume will have been near people in work.