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OPINION Let me start by saying that I would recommend people to use the Ministry of Health’s Covid Tracer app and turn on the new Bluetooth proximity tracking feature that will be available starting Thursday.
I will be doing it. What can you lose?
However, the sad reality is that we already have the data to assume that it is likely not sufficient.
It may be the failure we must have to persuade politicians that if they ever feel the need to use technology effectively to help contain a pandemic, Covid, or any future disease, then they won’t be able to avoid some tough decisions.
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Starting Thursday, users of the Covid Tracer app will be able to activate a feature on most iPhone and Android phones that use Bluetooth to detect other nearby phones that have the same feature running.
If someone is diagnosed with Covid, in theory, that should allow an alert to be automatically sent to other people who spent time near that person while they were infectious, even if they didn’t scan with a QR code to register at a location. around the same time (which people should keep doing).
KEVIN STENT / things
Bluetooth proximity tracking and place “scanning” are complementary techniques to aid contact tracing, rather than direct substitutes.
The system is completely anonymous and the ministry does not obtain information about where people have been or who they have been in contact with, so no one should worry about their privacy.
And if someone was meeting up with your drug dealer or had some other underground link, it won’t matter one iota in the scheme of things if you leave your phone at home for that anyway.
The main reason to think that the function is unlikely to be very useful is that the evidence suggests that not enough people activate the function for it to be significantly effective.
The number of people using the Covid Tracer app to scan QR codes peaked at just under 1 million on September 4, when concerns about a community outbreak in Auckland were nearing a peak.
That means it was being used by about a quarter of New Zealand adults that day.
We still don’t know how many active users of the Covid Tracer app will install the new Bluetooth feature, but let’s say all those millions of people who scanned codes that day in September do.
That’s unlikely, if only because using Bluetooth drains the phone’s batteries a bit faster, but let’s ignore that and also assume they’re careful enough to never let the battery drain when they’re out and about.
Hey, let’s get on with our rose-tinted glasses and say another 250,000 previously resisting people decide this is the feature they’ve been waiting for to start using Covid Tracer on a regular basis.
That would mean that around 31 percent of adults would have the Bluetooth feature continuously turned on.
In that situation, there would be a less than 10 percent chance of a warning being sent for every Covid close contact event, because both people would have to use the feature for the contact to be detected.
Those assumptions would be stupidly optimistic in the run-up to a future community transmission outbreak, given that the number of people using the Covid Tracer app on a daily basis has since plummeted to less than 200,000.
So the likely detection rate drops to less than 1 percent, using the same assumptions.
On the contrary, the effectiveness of the application could also be expected to decrease in a situation where there is already widespread community transmission.
This is because smartphone-based Bluetooth proximity detection is associated with a lot of ‘false alarms’ if your sensitivity is set not to miss too many real close contacts.
That’s not necessarily a problem in the early stages of an outbreak, but if Covid transmission is widespread, the risk is that people will be bombarded by alerts they are likely to ignore.
Remember that the system has been designed so that the Ministry of Health cannot track who would have received the alerts.
So the ‘Catch 22’ is that people are unlikely to voluntarily use proximity tracking if they don’t believe they are at real risk of serious illness, and if so, there comes a point where it is probably too late. for it will be very useful.
That suggests that technology must be mandatory to be effective.
But it’s hard to see how the use of a Bluetooth smartphone function could be controlled given that not everyone has a phone that can run one, and even if they did, how could you realistically verify that people are using it?
And that inevitably leads to the ugly conclusion that if the Ministry of Health is to use proximity-based technology to effectively control a pandemic and perhaps shorten lockdowns, then a mandatory card or wearable device that everyone can see will likely be required. . is using.
That or some massive change in public behavior, of which we really haven’t seen evidence.
