[ad_1]
The official Corona app is designed to help break the chain of infection. Other European countries are not that far away yet, taking a different approach to handling the data.
Soon, as many Swiss as possible should use the federal tracking app on their smartphones.
The crown crisis is far from over, but after the closure in early March, the Federal Council announced the first relief last week. Part of the measures to further contain the epidemic could be a contact tracking app, and this should be ready for use in around three weeks. “We are currently working with ETH Lausanne and ETH Zurich to complete an application by May 11,” said Pascal Strupler, director of the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG).
The application will be based on a concept called “DP-3T”, which can be viewed online. It works through bluetooth technology. The app is supposed to anonymously save contacts and meeting times with other people who also use the app. If a person becomes infected with Sars-CoV-2 and is notified in the app, contacts are informed so they can be quarantined or evaluated. The use of the application must be voluntary. According to the BAG, this also means that it will never be a condition to visit a restaurant or gym, for example.
Other scientific institutions are involved in the project, including University College London, the University of Oxford and the Helmholtz Center for Information Security (CISPA). Swiss software developers Ubique and PocketCampus are among them.
Neighboring countries take a different approach.
Other European countries are also working at full speed to develop contact tracking applications. However, Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France, for example, take a different approach than the Swiss.
Simply put, it is whether confidential data such as the identification of the infected person, their contact persons and meeting times should be anonymously entrusted to a central server or whether the anonymous identification of the infected person should sent decentrally to everyone in the network. The Swiss app should work according to the last principle. The Federal Commissioner for Data and Information Protection, the National Center for Cyber Security and the National Ethics Commission see this as the best privacy protection. Marcel Salathé, an epidemiologist at ETH Lausanne, is also pleased that Switzerland is decentralized. “That sends an important signal, also internationally,” he told NZZ.
In recent weeks, there has been a dispute over these two different data storage systems within the pan-European project “PEPP-PT”, in which the Swiss were initially involved with “DP-3T”. At the launch in early April, Salathé was also one of the driving forces. But last Friday, the investigator announced his withdrawal and complained about the lack of transparency. Meanwhile, all those involved have turned their backs on the decentralized concept “DP-3T” “PEPP-PT”.
The Swiss benefit from the fact that Google and Apple have opted for a decentralized system, as the two American tech companies announced shortly before Easter. Technically, you must trust the two companies to implement them. The app’s success will hinge on integration with the Apple and Google interfaces, said IT professor and crypto expert Kenny Paterson of ETH Zurich. Its publication is scheduled in the same period of time as the application. Countries that rely on a centralized approach initially face greater technical hurdles than Swiss implementation.
Internationally compatible in the future?
Another question will be how and if the different approaches will soon be compatible with each other. Because the fact that contact tracking apps also work across national borders was actually an important argument on the part of the federal government. A week ago Patrick Mathys, Head of the Crisis Management and International Cooperation Section at the BAG, said: “We would like to participate in this European initiative because it would also make cross-border use possible.” Because when the borders with neighboring countries were opened again, there would be hundreds of thousands of people who would cross them.
Now the Swiss seem to be alone for the moment. “We are now working on international compatibility, and this will certainly be easier with other applications that are based on the same decentralized principle,” said Salathé. He personally hopes that this approach will be used worldwide. One of the other co-founders of “PEPP-PT” is optimistic. “I think it is great if Switzerland quickly provides an app for its citizens,” German IT entrepreneur Chris Boos told NZZ. “I am confident that we will be able to do this interoperable in the future and continue to work together rather than against each other.”
The problem with volunteering
Another challenge to the effectiveness of the application is how many people actually use it. Singapore shows how disappointing a voluntary participation in a contact tracking app can be. There, only 12 percent of the population uses this application, which works similarly to the Swiss one. Wide acceptance among the population is important. According to researchers at the University of Oxford, the app can only contain the epidemic if at least 60 percent participate. In Switzerland there would be about 5 million inhabitants.
