In May, we wrote about a new Covid-19 tracking app that the UK government was trialing on the Isle of Wight. The app’s launch has been plagued with problems after the government initially spent $13.5 million building a product earlier in the summer, only to find it didn’t work properly on iPhones.

The UK government is preparing to roll out its long-awaited coronavirus tracking app, called NHS Covid-19 and costing £35 million, on September 24.

The UK initially rejected a model of the app proposed by tech giants Apple and Google, which advocated for a model where tracking between people happened on the phones themselves. The tech giants said this approach would safeguard citizens’ privacy.

Under the government’s previous plan, the data from the health tracking apps would have been shuttled into a centralized system, potentially open to surveillance from police and intelligence agencies.