NHS will keep data of those with coronavirus for two decades

A privacy notice posted by Public Health England has shown that the NHS will keep personal data about people with coronavirus for 20 years as part of the test-and-trace programme.

This means that information, including full name and date of birth, as well as phone numbers and home and email addresses, will be collected and stored for people with coronavirus, or symptoms of coronavirus, alongside data about those symptoms.

Furthermore, those who have been identified as contacts of people with coronavirus will have all but their date of birth collected and stored for five years.

However, individuals will be able to ‘request’ that their information be deleted, but PHE warns that ‘this is not an absolute right’.

Public Health England said: “The information needs to be kept for this long as may [sic] be needed to help control the spread of coronavirus, both currently and possibly in the future. It is held on PHE’s secure cloud environment, which is kept up to date to protect it from viruses and hacking. It can only be seen by those who have a specific and legitimate role in the response and who are working on the NHS Test and Trace. All these staff have been trained to protect people’s confidentiality.”