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Singapore’s new contact tracking app, TraceTogether, being used as a preventative measure against Covid-19 coronavirus in the city-state.
Catherine Lai | AFP via Getty Images
Apple and Google on Monday revealed sample code and sample software screenshots using the companies’ contact tracking software.
The two tech giants are supporting a way to track and notify people that they may have been infected with Covid-19 using the Bluetooth signals from people’s phones anonymously.
Governments around the world are expected to publish and encourage digital contact tracking apps to help public health departments slow the spread of the coronavirus as people return to work. Apple and Google’s system is one of several competitive systems that they say can effectively track and notify who’s been in contact with infected people without compromising privacy.
Google and Apple are not creating contact tracking apps. Instead, they’ve created a system, specifically called an Application Programming Interface (API) on iOS and Android that allows whitelisted public health group apps to more easily make contact tracking apps without exhausting the battery life, particularly on the Apple iPhone, which restricts applications using Bluetooth in the background.
On Monday, Apple and Google released screenshots they called illustrative concepts. This is not the exact software that the public health authorities will use, but it is a basis for them to start without building a complete software program from scratch and shows what the system is capable of. Representatives from Apple and Google said the shared sample code on Monday may start the process of creating the contact tracking apps on their system.
The official system is expected to go live in mid-May. Apple and Google did not comment on any individual country or public health group committed to using their system.
What users can see when a contact tracking app is started for the first time:
What users can see when they test positive for Covid-19 and enter it into the app
What an exposure notification would look like to someone with Covid-19
How the configuration looks
Android
iOS
It is now up to governments and public health departments to choose which system they prefer. For example, in the UK, your National Health Service is opting for an application system that provides data to public health authorities so that they can communicate with potentially infected people manually, which is not possible when using Google and Apple unless the user submits their information
Apple and Google support a decentralized approach that doesn’t use GPS location data, collects a phone number or an email address, saying it’s a more private way of tracking contacts. The hope is that this system can get faster and more widespread adoption because users remain anonymous and are contacted through automation if they are at risk.
In the United States, there is no national effort to create a digital contact tracking application, leaving it to the states and counties. The CDC recently released a document outlining preferred criteria for digital contact tracking tools, including digital contact tracking applications, which it calls “proximity tracking” and Apple and Google call “exposure notification.”
The guidelines do not support the Apple and Google system, but open the door to proximity-based “anonymous push notifications,” as the Apple-Google system is designed to provide.
