The Standard – by Grant LaFleche
Smartphone owners in Ontario likely didn’t know it, but the bones of the upcoming COVID Alert app have already been quietly downloaded onto their phones.
Built on the digital infrastructure of Google and Apple operating systems, the app is set to go live in July and is completely voluntary. But deep in the settings of phones that use an Apple or Google phone, users will find something called “COVID-19 exposure notifications.”
At the moment, the program’s features are inactive, but Niagara’s acting medical officer of health, Dr. Mustafa Hirji, said the software companies have downloaded parts of app into smartphones in preparation for its release. At the moment, all its features are turned off.
Premier Doug Ford wants as many people as possible to download the app next month. His government claims it will help identify new COVID-19 cases faster by improving contact tracing. However, Hirji said the app will actually be of little use to public health officials hunting down new novel coronavirus exposures.
Right now, when someone tests positive for COVID-19, public health officers launch an investigation to find anyone who may have been in contact with the infected person while they were likely contagious. Those people are placed in isolation and tested.
COVID-19 Alert will inform a user if someone else — that person must also have the app and be somewhere nearby — tested positive for COVID-19.
Phones with the app will communicate via Bluetooth signals, effectively registering the users as contacts for 14 days. If one of those people later tests positive for COVID-19, and voluntarily inputs the result into the app, the person they were near will receive an alert and tell them to contact public health.
COVID Alert will not tell a user who the infected person is, where or even when they came close enough for the phones to share information via Bluetooth.
Hirji said because the app doesn’t tell public health who tested positive, it cannot start a contact tracing investigation.
Nor can public health find out who the infected user is. The app doesn’t collect personal information and automatically destroys data it does have after 14 days. While this will protect user privacy, it effectively limits the usefulness of the app for public health authorities.
Some countries have used apps as a contact tracing tool, most notably South Korea and Singapore. But those apps had no privacy protections and recorded all information about the phone’s user and where they have been, and transmitted that data to the government.
Hirji said Norway had an app similar to the one to be rolled out in Ontario, but it was ultimately abandoned because it was useless.
“You have to keep in mind that there is no scientific research done that shows these apps are actually useful and will speed up contact tracing,” Hirji said.
A similar app was recently launched in Alberta. To date, only 11 per cent of Alberta residents have downloaded it.
Hirji said COVID Alert could be somewhat useful if it contained a code public health could use to identify an infected person.
However, public health authorities are already notified of any positive COVID-19 test results and are mandated to reach out to an infected person’s contacts within 24 hours.
It is also not clear how effective it would be in a region like Niagara, which presently has a low daily case count.
Gotta love spyware.
Unfrigginbelievable….
Good find Mary! Thank you for posting it
My phone got the virus now
My Galaxy download a Samsung update this morning .