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Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn has presented a concept for the further development of the Corona warning app. In the future, users should be informed about possible risks several times a day and, in the event of a corona positive result, they should be asked several times to share their test results with other users.
This stems from a “future development report” of the app that Spahn submitted to the Chancellery in the run-up to the crown’s consultations. The document is available to SPIEGEL. In the afternoon, Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to discuss the next steps in the crown pandemic with the prime ministers of the federal states (read more here).
Until now, a verification of risk encounters within 24 hours was only possible via the Corona warning app. This limitation has been lifted, according to the current status, the risk status can already be verified six times a day, as the newspaper says. This is important because the app is meant to prevent further infections by quickly informing potentially infected people.
According to an as-yet-unpublished status report from the ministry, the Corona warning app has now logged around 22.4 million downloads, an average of around 99,000 per day for the past two weeks. With the rapid rise in the number of infections, there was a further sharp increase in downloads of several million.
Very few users of the application report their infection.
However, many users so far have only used the app passively. They are warned of possible risky contacts, but they do not enter their own positive results, and they do not warn their contacts with them. More recently, only about 2200 users noticed their positive results in the application on a weekly average, on peak days it is up to 3000. However, in view of the current number of infections, this is only a fraction of the newly infected.
Therefore, a “reminder function” should be incorporated into the application in the future. “The notification should be displayed two hours after the positive test result is displayed to remind the user that the test result has not yet been approved,” the document says. Another reminder should appear after four hours. The ministry also plans to simplify the user interface to facilitate entry. Therefore, reporting your own infection is voluntary.
Stricter methods of increasing the reporting rate had also been discussed in advance. It was thought, for example, to allow users to consent to the reporting of a positive result immediately after downloading or to set it as the normal case, which users would have to decline (“opt out”). However, both options were ruled out.
More data through a voluntary survey
Another improvement is comparatively easy to implement: more information in the app should increase motivation to use the app. This includes news on the progress of the pandemic and current key figures for the warning app. The Robert Koch Institute websites and the warning app have so far provided both, but the app itself has not.
Spahn’s ministry is now trying to counter criticism that the app has so far barely provided epidemiologically valuable data due to its extremely data-saving design with the idea of a voluntary data donation. In the future, users who have responded positively will be shown a link in the app that they can use to participate in a survey on a website. This should provide increasingly meaningful data.
In addition, “it is verified in what form a diary of contacts can be integrated”, says in the newspaper. There, users could also voluntarily enter their encounters, for example during longer stays in closed rooms, “so that these notes can be used as a reminder in the event of a subsequent infection.” Virologist Christian Drosten, for example, recommends such a contact diary. SPD health politician Karl Lauterbach had already proposed it as an addition to the app in September.
I hope help from Google and Apple
In general, the document shows that those responsible for the application apparently take criticism seriously. Both Lauterbach and the Chaos Computer Club had criticized that the application works according to the scientific knowledge of the beginning of the year and does not sufficiently take into account the knowledge acquired since then about the risk of infection in certain situations and circumstances (“groups of infections” ).
The ministries write that “it will be verified to what extent the detection of clusters is technically feasible.” However, this must be done within the data-saving architecture. Furthermore, the risk of a significant increase in false reports must remain manageable.
In the event of a fundamental problem with the application, the German authorities await the help of Google and Apple, whose interface (“Exposure Notification Framework”) uses the German application. It’s all about the accuracy of the measurement. This could be improved with a new version of the interface “considerably more developed”, because now “more pseudonymous information about the encounters” would be collected: “This significantly increases the accuracy of the risk assessment.”
However, the new specifications of the US corporations apparently require considerable renovation work in the German application beforehand. How long it might take to stay open on the paper. In general, the report does not give any specific date on when innovations can be expected. In the draft resolution for the conference of country leaders and Merkel, the application is only covered comparatively briefly; says it will receive three updates in the next six weeks. Other implementations, such as the contact journal, “will be implemented as soon as possible in 2021.”
The changes are not too early. While the federal government is celebrating on the draft resolution for “one of the most successful warning apps in Europe”, critical voices have recently risen, also from the public health service, which the app was supposed to support with fast digital contact tracking.
If the ratings in the Google Play Store can serve as a standard, many users are also dissatisfied; more recently there were harsh comments and one-star ratings. In a recent survey by infratest dimap, 44 percent of respondents said they had not downloaded the app and did not plan to. Five percent said it didn’t work for them. Four percent said they had removed them again.
