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The COVID-19 infection tracking app, Immuni, has been activated throughout Italy since last June.An important step, which allows us to become fundamental in the coming months, if Italians download the application and create that defense system that goes far beyond the simple report of a positive for Coronavirus. The Immune app from Italian developers Bendign Spoons has been in the news for months as the Italian startup had the consent of the Government to create the COVID-19 positive tracking app for the resumption of activities in Phase 2 and then also the Phase 3. A test phase began on June 8 in 4 regions of Italy (with the success of having already reported 3 positives) and then was active everywhere since June 15.
A few months later, the publication of official and accurate data by the Ministry of health of the app downloads by Italians, but also of how many notifications the Immuni app has activated and how many positives it has detected. An application that is preparing to cross 7 million downloads with more than 5,000 notifications sent and more than 330 confirmed positives.
Immune – here is the accurate download data and more
Following the data published on the official website request Immune It turns out that on October 1, 2020, that is, after 4 months, the app was downloaded to be precise by 6,679,118 italian users. A good result but one that certainly differs from those numbers that would guarantee perfect coverage and detection throughout the Italian territory. In this case, following the trend of the graph, we discover that in the last period, probably due to the accentuation of infections, the application has seen an increase in downloads, a sign that Italians are somehow understanding that this is also a valid tool for detection of coronavirus infections.
Specifically, we also observe that based on the data received from the Ministry of Health There have been notifications from Immuni more than 5,329 times and that the positive users reported by the application were 338. These numbers are clearly not exaggerated, but they still allow us to have a picture of the effective operation of the application that could be adapted even better if all Italians downloaded it to their devices.
Immune: how the tracking app works
We remember that Immune,and we had seen it some time ago in this detailed article,works entirely on the system created ad hoc by Apple and Googlefor notifications, but also to manage the entire operation. This means thatGPS is never used to manage user location, but uses Bluetooth if allowed to have maximum security in terms of user location. This is a fundamental step because the users who use it will never share any type of personal data that will instead be replaced by completely anonymous identification codes that will never be associated with names of persons or even less with telephone numbers or other data attributable to natural person used by the application.
Specifically, the entire contact tracking system based onBluetooth low energy.What does this mean?When two users get close enough to each other for a certain period, their devices mutually register the so-called mobile proximity “ identifier ” in the local memory of the device. These ” identifiers ” are generated by temporary exposure keys and change several times per hour and are generatedby chance. When a user tests positive for SARS-CoV-2, they have the option of uploading their recent temporary exposure keys to a server, although this can only be done with validation from a healthcare professional. The application periodically downloads the new temporary exposure keys and uses them to obtain the rotating proximity identifiers of infected users. Then it compares them with those stored in the device memory and alerts the user if a risky contact has occurred.
Don’t use GPS location dataClearly, the app cannot tell where contact with a potentially contagious user occurred, or the identities of the people involved. As mentioned to implement its contact tracking feature, Immuni leverages Apple and Google’s exposure notification framework. Finally, in addition to the temporary exposure keys, the Immuni application also sends some analysis data to the server that includes epidemiological and technical information that is sent in order to help the National Health Service to provide effective assistance to users, of according to the ‘Art. 6.2.b and 6.3 of Decree Law 28/2020.
The application can be downloaded on both Android and iOS smartphones.For new generation devicesHUAWEI(and therefore also HONOR) the incoming application and will allow, as with the other two operating systems, to track the positives through the so-called HMS or HUAWEI services. The application, whether Android, iOS and in the future also HUAWEI, must be downloaded directly from the official Immuni website or from the Google and Apple store, taking care in this second case to download the appropriate application.
We have seen in the explanation of the technical details of the Immuni application that some older smartphones would not be suitable for installing the application. Specifically lThe application can be downloaded and installed on these devices:
- iOS:iPhone with iOS version 13.5 or higher. The iPhone models that support iOS 13.5 are iPhone 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max, Xr, Xs, Xs Max, X, SE (2nd generation), 8, 8 Plus, 7, 7 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, SE (first generation)
- Android:smartphone with Bluetooth Low Energy, Android version 6 (Marshmallow, API 23) or higher and Google Play Services version 20.18.13 or higher (all three requirements are required to use Immuni).
