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The federal government wants to intensify communication about the Corona warning app. Bild: KEYSTONE / Watson
Analysis
Explosive infections, very few users: so it is with SwissCovid and Co.
Corona’s warning apps in Europe are still facing the greatest stress test. When it comes to cross-border data exchange, Switzerland has a bad hand.
There is dissatisfaction across Europe due to Corona’s national warning apps. The number of infections is increasing, but the number of users is stagnating. Also, after a positive test result, many users are not ready to warn other people of a possible infection and refrain from entering the Covid code.
In several EU countries, the results of the applications so far have been “quite sobering”, comments netzpolitik.org.
- In Germany The Corona warning app has been downloaded more than 19 million times since its launch in mid-June. However, since then, only around 10,000 test-positive people have entered their alarm code.
- In Austria With a million downloads and only 412 reports of infection, the provisional sentence is equally modest. In countries like France and Italy, apps would also struggle with low acceptance.
And Switzerland? SwissCovid, launched in late June, has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times. This Monday it had around 1.74 million active users. But this is far from the goal of 3 million users. This week the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) wants to intensify the information campaign for the application.
According to independent experts, this is urgently needed. The deep acceptance is due to poor communication, epidemiologist Marcel Salathé tells SRF.
SwissCovid really works and helps to break chains of undetected infection. Since mid-July, more than 130 cases have been reported by people who were warned by the app about a possible infection and then tested positive. In view of the exponentially increasing number of cases, this appears to be very little, but it is a beginning that according to the SwissCovid developers we now need to build on. In addition, the cantons depend on all kinds of contact tracing support. Watson’s investigation, based on feedback from those affected, has been showing problems since late summer: In numerous cases, infected people only received the Covid code after days. Therefore, valuable time was wasted in warning those who might be affected.
Marcel Salathé said:
“It’s good to hear that people are talking about this app now. You should have done it a little earlier. But of course these things take time. Now this communication impulse has to come back. People have now understood that it is an extremely secure application that can help support contact tracing. “
those: srf.ch
From voluntary to mandatory application?
Last week, those responsible in Portugal dropped a bomb. The Social Democratic Prime Minister Antonio Costa announced that they wanted the Corona warning application to be mandatory for the population.
“Stay Away Covid” is based, like SwissCovid and most other Corona warning apps in Europe, on the interfaces provided by Apple and Google and has been available on a voluntary basis since the beginning of September.
So far, around 1.7 million of Portugal’s 10 million inhabitants have downloaded. A relatively low level of acceptance, which, according to the government, is insufficient to guarantee the effectiveness of the application.
Now the Portuguese parliament will vote on a special regulation that makes the application and other crown rules, such as wearing a mask, mandatory. Under the proposed law, anyone who does not use the mobile application could be sanctioned with fines of up to 500 euros.
Portuguese MPs are due to vote on the government’s proposals this Friday. The big problem: the government does not have a majority in parliament, so the controversial measure may fail.
According to a report by the AFP news agency, the conservative opposition has announced that it could vote for the new crown rules. But he wants to reject the mandatory application in the parliamentary committee.
The non-profit organization D3, which campaigns for the digital rights of citizens in Portugal, criticized the bill as an unprecedented and undemocratic invasion of the privacy of the Portuguese. If necessary, they will take legal action and file a lawsuit.
The National Data Protection Commission (CNPD) warned that mandatory applications were problematic in terms of privacy and also raised ethical questions. The CNPD spokeswoman recalled that the European Commission had recommended the voluntary use of corona warning applications. Apple and Google, which control access to the iOS and Android platforms, also specify the voluntary nature.
This mandatory application is fundamentally excluded in Switzerland. With the amendment to the Epidemic Law in June, the parliament anchored voluntariness.
Where is the interoperability?
In Brussels, meanwhile, officials hoped that the merger of national application systems would increase their effectiveness, says netzpolitik.org in its current report.
Until now, national tracking systems have been unable to communicate with each other and exchange data, although this was a stated goal in early summer.
But now an important intermediate step was announced on Monday on the way to cross-border application functionality in Europe: The German Corona application is now also communicating with tracking systems in Italy and Ireland. A start. At the end of November, the EU Commission wants to ensure the secure exchange of data with more than a dozen countries so that smartphone users at home and abroad can be warned.
Switzerland is out. At least for the moment.
According to the EU Commission, there are legal obstacles that get in the way of data sharing. At least with Switzerland and Great Britain separate contracts are necessary.
The EU made the conclusion of a health deal dependent on the progress of negotiations on a framework agreement, according to the BAG in August.
France will probably be left out
The EU Commission has been working on the system for months, writes netzpolitik.org. To do this, a server farm was put into operation in Luxembourg with the help of the companies SAP and Deutsche Telekom. Systems in EU countries can safely exchange infection codes via these computers.
According to a press release, a second batch of national apps is expected to be added next week after a testing phase, namely eRouška from the Czech Republic, Smittestop from Denmark, Apturi COVID from Latvia and Radar Covid from Spain. The latest application in Spain with the Catalonia region is not yet fully covered.
The actual gateway for data sharing has been working since the end of September, golem.de reported. The other eight countries to be added from the end of October and later are Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.
It is not yet clear how the data exchange with the French application will be possible. The problem: The French government had decided to do it only technically and did not implement the Apple and Google interfaces.
A full app update has been announced for October 22, but nothing should change in the technical concept. This speaks clearly against integration into the European system, which also affects Switzerland and the many French cross-border travelers in the medium and long term.
