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An NHS coronavirus contact tracing app has been launched in England and Wales.
As of Thursday night, Android users had downloaded it more than a million times, according to the Google Play Store.
The total number is likely to be higher when iPhone downloads are included, but Apple doesn’t provide similar numbers for app downloads.
The NHS coronavirus contact tracing app has been downloaded over a million times
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has called the new mobile phone app an “important step forward” in the UK’s fight against COVID-19.
Asks users to self-isolate for 14 days if it detects they were around someone with coronavirus.
It is private?
Yes. All contacts remain on your phone, so they are not sent to anyone. Even if someone were to break into your phone, the data is all anonymous, so all they would see would be strings of random numbers. As applications progress, this is as private as possible.
How can I be sure?
The code is open source, so if you are a developer, you can take a look. If not, you will have to trust it, but rest assured that the best privacy researchers in the world have studied it carefully, so it has received high-quality scrutiny.
This is why countries from Switzerland to Scotland have validated it for use.
Works?
It depends on what you mean by work. The technology comes from Google and Apple, so it is unlikely to break (although even Twitter and Instagram fail from time to time). The developers assure us that it will not drain the battery either.
That is good. But will it really stop the virus?
Wouldn’t it be great if it did? Unfortunately, we don’t have the technology for that, but in the meantime, the app could definitely help.
Think of it this way: If you received a notification telling you that the friend you met for coffee tested positive, and as a result, you don’t visit your grandfather, that could literally save your life.
Many moments like that could make a very real difference in the spread of the virus.
If I receive a notification, do I have to isolate myself?
You don’t have to in the sense that you won’t be punished if you don’t, but you should anyway.
What if it is not exact? At work, I keep my phone in a locker; I don’t want to be told to isolate myself just because the guy with the locker next to it has a positive test
If you are in this situation, there is a switch in the app to turn it off. Of course, there are always times when it won’t work perfectly.
If you leave your phone in your jacket and someone else sits next to it, that could activate the app. This is technology, not magic, but since most of us are quite attached to our phones, it should be fine.
I do not know. I read somewhere that there are many false positives
I read that too and I think some different things are confusing.
Sometimes the app makes mistakes about distance – you might think someone was two meters away when they were actually 2.5 meters away.
But you will never receive a notification if you have not been around someone who has tested positive for at least 15 minutes. That’s a good reason to take alerts seriously.
:: Good. But what if no one else downloads it?
As a journalist, I can safely predict that the media will become obsessed with total download figures, but individually we shouldn’t worry about that. If everyone you know has the app, that’s all that matters.
Perhaps the best way to think of the app is as the digital version of a skin. If everyone used one they would really work, but just because they don’t in a city doesn’t mean you should stop using yours on the bus.
Excellent! I’ll make my dad get it. But he has an old phone
Oh sorry, you can’t access it. Yes. A little depressing, I know.
Oh. But for me, is it a problem if I work in Scotland?
You have found another problem. The apps for Scotland and Northern Ireland are not communicating with the app that launched Thursday in England and Wales. That could change, but until then, your best bet is to download all the apps separately.
The new app is available in England and Wales
What about QR code registrations? Are they also private?
Yes. In fact, this is a good example of how private the entire system is – it is so private that if there is an outbreak, testing and tracing will not know who you are.
They may send you a warning, which won’t have the place name on it, but they literally have no idea who you are.
That doesn’t sound very good for contact tracing.
What can I say? You wanted privacy, you have privacy.
One last question: why didn’t you know all this? It would have been very helpful
For me, this is the biggest concern of the app. On Thursday I went to a mosque in Newham, east London, one of the areas of the country most affected by COVID-19. You have had the application for several weeks as part of the test.
But the president of the mosque said that at best one in 10 people used it and did not believe the local community had been adequately involved. I heard similar reports from other people in the area. Not a great sign.
But again, it’s important to keep these things in perspective.
After the pandemic, the mosque established a food bank. Today it still feeds 300 people a week.
When it comes to controlling the virus, the stakes could hardly be higher. Even if the communication hasn’t been that effective, it makes sense to download the app if you can.
