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Many politicians praise the Corona warning app as a great success; German medical officers, on the other hand, see little benefit. As long as the data is not automatically sent to the health authorities, the application is not of much help.
Medical officials in Germany estimate that the use of the corona warning app in the national fight against the pandemic is very low. Since the app’s data is not automatically sent to health authorities, the app in its current form is not of much help in quickly fighting corona outbreaks, said the president of the Federal Association of Physicians in the Public Health Service. , Ute Teichert, to the newspapers. the Funke media group.
Data protection on pandemic protection
The app “plays almost no role” in the daily work of health authorities, Teichert said. It is extremely rare for an application user to report a warning to authorities. Politicians have decided “to put data protection above pandemic protection,” said the public health doctor. You have to accept this.
According to Teichert, it would be useful if the app had a function with which users could, at least voluntarily, allow warnings to be transmitted directly to the health department. This would mean that responsible authorities would be informed much faster about cases of infection and could quickly take action to contain a corona outbreak, he said.
18 million users in Germany
However, at the moment, it is up to the users of the application if they inform the health authorities after a recorded contact with an infected person. It cannot be verified if they really do.
In view of the growing number of corona infections, the federal government called on German citizens on Wednesday to make greater use of the corona warning app. 100 days after the start, more than 18 million users have downloaded the app on their smartphone, he said.
Spahn and Braun: a “great success”
The responsible minister, Jens Spahn, admitted that only about half of the users with a positive corona test would report the result via their smartphone. However: the head of the chancellery, Helge Braun, and the federal minister of Health, Jens Spahn (both CDU), praised the application, which is intended to warn users when they come into contact with someone infected with corona, such as a big success. With 18 million downloads, the app was downloaded as much as in all other EU countries combined.
The application communicates with other smartphones via Bluetooth. If a user tests positive for the coronavirus, the application sounds an alarm to those users who have been so close to the infected person during a certain time that they could have been infected. After an alarm, users should contact the health department and conduct a test themselves. The use of the application is voluntary.
With information from Kai Küstner, ARD capital studio
