Matt Hancock has admitted his new coronavirus tracing app will not mean an end to social distancing.
The government has made testing, tracking and tracing the spread of the virus a key tenet of its fight against the infection.
They are encouraging everyone who can to download the app which will be trialled in the Isle of Wight from tomorrow.
Mr Hancock wants to use test, trace and track to get the infection rate down, but he says it will still need the public to maintain social distancing.
Explaining the strategy Mr Hancok said: "Test, track and trace will help us to get the R down, and to get the number of new cases down and to keep it down, but not on its own.
"It’s primarily the social distancing measures we’ve taken so far that have flattened the curve."
“Our goal is not simply to flatten the curve - it’s to get the occurrence of Covid-19 infections to very low levels.”
Mr Hancock asked the public to play their part by downloading and using the app when it comes online.
He added: “It isn’t just about the technology and people in call centres it’s also about citizens acting in the right way.
“Acting in the right way to download the app, because that protects you, it protects your family and protects the NHS - but also acting in the right way to do contact tracing yourself.”
Setting out the test, track and trace programme he said it would "hunt down and isolate the virus so it is unable to reproduce".
"Crucially, test, track and trace allows us to take a more targeted approach to lockdown while still safely containing the disease," he said.
"Creating this system is a huge national undertaking of unprecedented scale and complexity."
It would involve an "army" of human contact tracers and the new app.
The trial of the app will begin on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday beginning with NHS staff and then being rolled out across the island.
At the daily press conference, Deputy Chief Officer for England Jonathan Van Tam said: “New cases need to come down further. We need to continue to track this index and we have to get new cases lower.”
Coronavirus testing has failed to hit the government's 100,000 target for the second day in a row.
Just 85,186 tests were provided yesterday, new figures reveal.
And thousands of those will have been at-home tests, which are counted as they are dispatched by courier, rather than when the test is actually performed.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the UK's capacity for testing yesterday was 108,000.
Ministers insist testing capacity remains high, but put the lower figures down to fewer people being at work at the weekend.
Yesterday, Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove admitted testing had dipped under the government’s 100,000 target already, with only 76,496 tests provided on Saturday.
The contact tracing app - which the government wants ready by mid-May - is part of the crucial “test, track and trace” strategy that is needed before the UK-wide lockdown can be relaxed.
The app, which is voluntary, will use Bluetooth to track when people have come into close contact with someone who, now or later, tests positive for coronavirus.
It will urge someone who’s been in contact with a virus carrier to get tested and to isolate themselves if necessary.
The idea is that this would allow society to partially reopen while keeping the virus at bay and sick people in isolation.
It will be paired with an army of 18,000 human contact tracers to follow up on those who need further attention, or those who don’t download the app.
But experts have warned that the system being developed by NHSX is more vulnerable to fraud, hacking and abuse of data because it uses a centralised server.
A report in Health Service Journal (HSJ) claims the app had so far failed all of the tests required for listing it as an approved app to be used by the NHS.
They report senior figures raising concerns that the development of the app is being handled in "a kind of hamfisted way" - with frequent changes to the code making it difficult for NHS Digital to test.
They said the current version of the app was "a bit wobbly" but not a "big disaster".
Officials believe around 60% of the population need to use the app for it to be effective.
At the weekend ministers confirmed the NHSX tracing app would be trialled on the Isle of Wight this week before being rolled out more widely later this month.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has described test, trace and track as the key to controlling the spread of coronavirus and easing the lockdown.
Last week he hit his controversial target to test 100,000 people a day.
But critics have pointed out that since the target was hit the daily figure has dropped.
Downing Street insisted said today there was still capacity to carry out over 100,000 coronavirus tests a day, even though the latest figures showed just 76,496 tests were carried out in the 24 hours to 9am on Sunday.
The figure meant "we can now give a test to anyone who needs one" and the enhanced capacity would be important as part of the "test, track and trace" programme in the next phase of the response to coronavirus.
"There is often a fall over the course of the weekend. The key fact is that total capacity across all streams was 108,024 on May 2, so the capacity was there to provide more than 100,000 tests," the Prime Minister's official spokesman said.
"What the target did was help to significantly increase the capacity and get it up to more than 100,000 a day.
"The most important fact is that we can now give a test to anyone who needs one."
The spokesman added: "As it stands, the number of infections is hopefully falling, that will mean that there is less immediate demand for testing - that certainly shouldn't be seen as a bad thing.
"But the fact that we now have significantly enhanced capacity will be important on the test, track and trace programme."
