Contact tracing software find few takers in Europe seven months into pandemic
Mobile apps tracing new COVID-19 cases were touted as an integral part of Europe’s intend to beat the coronavirus outbreak. Seven months into the pandemic, virus cases are surging again and the software have not been widely adopted due to privacy concerns, technical problems and insufficient interest from the general public.
Britain, Portugal, and Finland this month became the latest to unveil smartphone software that alert persons if they’ve been near a person who ended up being infected so they can seek treatment or isolate - an integral part of breaking the chain of contagion.
But a few countries have scrapped their tracing apps and others that have rolled them out have found so few users that the technology isn't very effective. The adoption rate goes from in regards to a third of the population in Finland and Ireland, to 22% in Germany and a meager 4% in France.
Health officials at first targeted a 60% adoption rate, a good goal predicated on an Oxford University study from April although researchers noted less uptake still helps if other measures, such as for example social distancing, are enforced.
Kevin Kelly, an accountant in Limerick, Ireland, says his country’s iphone app is simple to use and helps gauge local infection trends by showing how many cases each county has. He mainly uses the check-in feature to report his symptoms daily, but worries that only a fraction of the other 1.3 million users do, too.
“Everyone downloaded it but I’m uncertain who is regularly using it,” said Kelly, 43.
The exposure alert function has so far been less useful: he hasn’t received any. “Unless there’s an enormous surge, that i suppose it could happen, that’s when we’ll see how effective it really is.”
Places that contain had the most success in getting people to voluntarily use virus-tracing applications tend to be smaller countries in Northern Europe where trust in the federal government tends to be higher and where people are more comfortable with new technologies.
Finland’s iphone app quickly became among Europe’s most popular when it launched in the beginning of September, accumulating about 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours. Downloads have kept rising roughly a third of the country’s 5.5 million persons now have it.
“I’ve gotten several calls from persons within their eighties calling to learn how the application works,” said Aleksei Yrttiaho, a spokesman for the Finnish Institute for Health insurance and Welfare.
Public trust in the federal government helps allay concerns about privacy and government surveillance first raised when some countries launched tracing software months earlier.
Finnish users said they felt it had been a civic responsibility to set up it.
“It’s our duty to take of care of the health of our fellow citizens and the ones close to us,” said William Oesch, 44, a photographer in Helsinki.
Ella Ahmas, a 23-year-old business student at Aalto University, said she was surprised the federal government had been in a position to persuade so many persons to download it, when Finns have already been less ready to use simpler methods like wearing masks on public transport.
“It’s not just a huge effort to download the app, which works alone,” she said.
Ahmas and Oesch shrugged off privacy issues, and noted their personal data had been held by famous brands Google and Facebook.
Most European tracing software are designed on a Google-Apple smartphone interface that uses Bluetooth technology to anonymously log the proximity of any other smartphones with the software installed. It generally does not track the phone’s whereabouts. Users who test positive for COVID-19 upload anonymous codes to alert others who’ve experienced close contact. The look is targeted at preserving user privacy, and that might be one factor helping adoption, though in addition, it hinders efforts to track their use and effectiveness.
They don’t yet work across the European Union’s many borders, but six countries have started testing a virtual “gateway” that permits this.
More intrusive approaches have already been less successful.
France’s app, which runs on the centralised data storage system criticized by privacy activists, comes with an adoption rate of just 4% months after its launch. Norwegian officials were forced to prevent their app due to privacy concerns over its make use of phone location data. Israel’s iphone app uses both Bluetooth and phone location data and says that uptake has not been as strong as hoped.
China, COVID-19’s original epicenter, doesn’t have a tracing application but instead the one which shows a coloured code indicating health status, increasing the country’s electronic monitoring.
“The privacy issue is a political choice,” said Sean L’Estrange, a social scientist at University College Dublin who has studied testing and tracing. “To the extent you can maximize privacy, you improve the credibility of the app since it won’t arouse suspicion.”
THE UNITED KINGDOM government switched to Google-Apple technology because of its new virus application for England and Wales after scrapping a centralized version due to technical issues.
The applications aren’t costly. Startup NearForm built Ireland’s for 850,000 euros ($1 million) while Finland’s came in under budget at 900,000 euros.
THE UNITED STATES doesn’t have a national tracing iphone app however, many states have launched their own. Pennsylvania and Delaware made a decision to use NearForm’s technology.
Even if it accumulates just a few extra cases, the Irish software is worth the amount of money given how little it cost, said L’Estrange.
But is it possible to determine whether these applications have had any influence on controlling the pandemic?
We would never know for certain, said Stephen Farrell, a computer scientist at Trinity College Dublin who has studied tracing apps. That’s because most software don’t require contact information from users, without which health authorities can’t follow-up. Which means it’s hard to assess just how many contacts are being found only through apps, how their positive test rates equate to the average, and just how many persons who are being identified anyway are receiving tested sooner and how quickly.
“I’m not aware of any health authority measuring and publishing details about those things, and even they tend hard to measure,” Farrell said.
At most, apps can provide an overall number of alerts sent. In Ireland, a lot more than 300 people who've tested positive have uploaded their codes, leading to 900 close contact alerts, out of over 33,000 confir
Source: www.deccanchronicle.com
