The head of Boris Johnson’s failing covid test and trace system has been told to self-isolate by the phone app designed to alert people they have been exposed to coronavirus.
Dido Harding, who heads the service, revealed on Wednesday morning she has been “pinged” with an alert just like the Prime Minister.
Johnson is self-isolating in Downing Street having been alerted by test and trace that he came in contact with the virus during a meeting with Conservative MPs in Downing Street last week.
Harding is married to Conservative MP John Penrose who has also been self-isolating since Monday.
Harding, a Tory peer, tweeted a screenshot of an app notification on Wednesday which carried the message “you need to self-isolate” until the end of November 26.
She wrote above the image: “Nothing like personal experience of your own products ... got this overnight. Feeling well. Many hours of Zoom ahead.”
But data shows that the system is continuing to struggle to reach much more than 60 per cent of the close contacts of people who test positive for the virus in England.
UK Government figures published on Thursday show 60.4 per cent of close contacts in England were reached through Test and Trace in the week ending November 4.
The Scottish Government was last week forced to admit there was a “coding error” in how its Test and Protect system logging response times.
In some cases the system had been performing up to five times worse than previously thought, with contact tracing taking longer than 72 hours to complete.
Nicola Sturgeon hit out at the small minority of Scots who are not answering their phones when contacted by Test and Protect after figures showing 400 people who tested positive for Covid in the previous week could not be reached.
