Coronavirus: Test and Trace App

Health & Diet Health & Diet: In The News
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Coronavirus: England’s revamped contact-tracing app to begin trials on Thursday.

Track and Trace (Phase II)

The software will be based on Apple and Google’s privacy-centric method of one smartphone detecting another.

Engineers are still trying to reduce how often the Bluetooth-based tech wrongly flags people as being within 2m (6.6ft) of each other. Officials are concerned about people going into quarantine as a consequence.

The Isle of Wight will be involved again, along with one other area and a volunteer group. The government intends to launch the experiment without much fanfare, because it is still not clear when a formal national rollout will occur.

The idea behind the app is to use people’s phones to log when they have been close to another person for so long, that there is a high risk of contagion. If one user is later diagnosed with the disease, the other person can be alerted to the fact before they begin exhibiting symptoms.

Baroness Dido Harding - who heads up the wider Test and Trace programme - cancelled an earlier trial on the Isle of Wight in June. This was because an app based on an alternative system spearheaded by NHSX - the health service’s digital innovation unit - had to deal with restrictions Apple imposes on how Bluetooth is used by third-party apps.

As a result, it only detected 4% of iPhones in cases where the app had gone to sleep because the two handsets involved had not been in recent active use. This prompted a switch to the Apple-Google solution, which does not have this problem.

But at the time, Baroness Harding said the US tech giant’s alternative had a different issue. She said it could not measure distance well enough to be trusted to direct people to self-isolate for a fortnight.

This has not prevented other places - including Northern Ireland - launching apps based on the technology.

But ongoing tests indicate that England’s new app is still worse at determining distance than the original NHS Covid-19 product. The team behind England’s app hopes it can still improve the accuracy rate to a high enough - but not perfect - level by the end of the year.

Millions of pounds spent by “Incompetent” Harding on successive systems which are dismal failures … :090:

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If you go to a pub or restaurant, you have to pay with a card, they know who you are anyway. I don’t understand why you have to give details too.

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Coz one person may pay for a whole group of people who, in turn will mingle with other folks?

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Dutch Folks could operate this system BTW;-)

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But, they could contact the others in their group, unless they had a row about who’s paying and weren’t speaking… :lol:

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AFAIK, any contract-tracing app will be independent of any other tracing mechanism, such as giving card or personal details in a restaurant:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/15/track-trace-app-uk-google-apple-when-download/

How do contact tracing apps work?

A contact-tracing app is designed to let people know if they have been in close contact with someone who later reports positive for Covid-19.

It could pinpoint exactly who needs to be in quarantine and who doesn’t, making it key to easing up social distancing measures. The purpose of the contact-tracing app is to try and track down people and alert them of the need to self-isolate faster than traditional methods.

Users who download the app to their phone can opt-in to record details of their symptoms when they start to feel unwell. In some countries, they can enter official Covid-19 test results to confirm they have the virus.

The app keeps a trace of others who have been in close contact through Bluetooth signals that transmit an anonymous ID. These low energy Bluetooth signals perform a digital “handshake” when two users come into close contact, but keep that data anonymous.

If an individual later reports that they are positive for coronavirus, it will then ping a message to people who have been in close-contact with them in the last 28 days based on their anonymous IDs.

The app will recommend those people self-isolate in case they have contracted the disease. Those contacted won’t know the identity of the person who may have passed on coronavirus.

If the person then takes a test and tests negative, they may be released from their self-isolation by a notification through the app.

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Latest:

It will be limited to residents in the Isle of Wight, the London Borough of Newham and NHS volunteer responders to begin with. The app will be available in Apple and Google’s online stores, but users will need to enter a code to activate it.

The software will tell users to self-isolate for a fortnight if the app detects they have been close to someone else diagnosed with the virus.

The app has several other functions, including:

[LIST]
[]An alert system that informs users of the coronavirus risk level close to their home, with the area defined by the first part of their postcode
[]A QR barcode scanner, so users can check in when they visit a venue and be told if others there later tested positive
[]A symptom-checking tool, which allows users to book a free test and get the results via the app
[]A countdown function that comes into effect if they are told to self-isolate, so users can keep track of how long to stay at home
[/LIST]

The developers acknowledge there are still issues with measuring the distance between handsets, meaning some people will be incorrectly logged as being at high risk.

Official social distancing guidance says that two people should not be within 2m (6.6ft) of each other for 15 minutes or more.

But when trying to detect this, lab tests indicate:

[LIST]
[]31% of cases are missed when the handsets were within range
[]45% of cases are incorrectly flagged when the two handsets were in fact further apart
[/LIST]

However, if the boundary is set at 5m, the accuracy rates radically improve. Then the handsets detect each other in more than 99% of all cases, regardless of whether iPhones or Android devices were involved. This is not useful in practice, but indicates the flaw that caused the original NHS Covid-19 app to be cancelled has been solved. That product often failed to detect cases involving two iPhones because of restrictions imposed on third-party software by Apple.

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The reason the track and trace apps are struggling is because Apple refuses to allow 3rd party app developers access to the raw bluetooth data because Apple says it is a privacy issue and they do not want 3rd party developers having access to users private information. If the raw data was available then the track and trace developers could work out the bluetooth distance issue but because they are not allowed, the developers are having to come up with other mathematical formulas which are not working because they are proving not reliable enough when working out the distances between two phones.

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Indeed … this from the linked article:

Part of the problem at present is that Apple and Google refuse to share the raw Bluetooth signal data involved.

While the two show no signs of backing down, they will shortly release a new version of their tool that should improve matters.

This development has also been welcomed by those involved with Switzerland’s SwissCovid app.

“While the updated Google/Apple exposure notification API [application programming interface] still aggregates and shuffles data for privacy reasons, it will expose more information needed by the app to compute exposure more precisely,” explained Prof Mathias Payer from the EPFL university in Lausanne.

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Hi

Why are we changing when Boris says we already have a World Beating System already?

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Coronavirus: Hundreds of thousands download Scottish Covid-19 tracing app

More than 400,000 people have downloaded Scotland’s new contact tracing app since it went live.

It became available to download free onto a smart phone from Apple’s App Store or Google Play on Thursday.

The Protect Scotland app lets people know if they have been in close contact with someone who later tests positive.

The Scottish government has said the software will support the Test and Protect system and is “another tool in the fight against Covid-19”.

Up until now, contact tracing has been done manually using a method followed for years to help control the spread of infectious diseases.

Comment - Rory Cellan-Jones

Scotland has followed Northern Ireland in choosing to use the toolkit provided by Apple and Google to build a contact tracing app which has privacy built in. Both have moved quickly by using the software developed for Ireland’s app.

Scotland did at first seem inclined to work with the NHSX England app team but seeing knotty technical issues with the English app they then decided to follow many other countries going down the Apple/Google route.

England also eventually changed tack and has been testing an app based on the Apple Google toolkit for the last month but there’s still no word on a national rollout - and it seems England is happy to be a follower rather than a leader in this technology.

Good for Scotland … :023:

Waiting for a working system from Dido “Incompetent” Harding seems pointless … :069:

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Now here’s a coincidence:

England and Wales’ contact-tracing app gets launch date

A new Covid-19 contact-tracing app will be launched across England and Wales on 24 September, the government has announced.

The app will let people scan barcode-like QR codes to register visits to hospitality venues and will implement Apple and Google’s method of detecting other smartphones.

Some hospitality venues have already been using their own QR code-based systems for test and trace but are now being asked to switch to the NHS version instead.

An alternative system, such as a handwritten register, must also be maintained for visitors who do not have smartphones, the Department of Health and Social Care said.

We need more detail … like the results of trials … :wink:

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NHS Covid-19 app: England and Wales get smartphone contact tracing for over-16s

People living in England and Wales are being urged to download the government’s official contact-tracing app following its official release.

NHS Covid-19 instructs users to self-isolate for 14 days if it detects they were nearby someone who has the virus.

It also has a check-in scanner to alert owners if a venue they have visited is found to be an outbreak hotspot.

Anyone aged 16 and over is being asked to install the app on to their smartphone.

The rest of the article is quite long and contains much more detail.

The government had originally intended to release the app months ago. But problems with the initial design and the addition of extra features meant it was only ready for its final public test in August.

One tech expert who has tracked the initiative acknowledged the team involved had worked hard to address concerns about privacy and transparency, but said wider problems could still limit its impact.

“Not only is the app late to launch, but it will be hindered by the delays in the testing system,” Rachel Coldicutt told the BBC. “If you don’t have symptoms, will a push notification saying you were near someone a week ago make you and your family self-isolate and spend days hitting refresh on the testing website, trying to find a test?”

I’ll download the app later (probably) … :wink:

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Hi

I have already downloaded it.

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Let us know your experience of the app … :slight_smile:

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Here in Scotland I was able to download it onto my android phone at the beginning of last week.

For non- technical folk like me, it is important to ensure Bluetooth is on and that your phone knows your location.

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I’ve got nothing to download it on to…:102:

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Neither have I.

It seems that it won’t work with the older iPhones still out there because their operating systems can’t handle the app’s software code.

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I’ve got the app working on a Motorola G7 - I’m in a High Risk Area - but I knew that anyway …

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One million downloads of contact tracer for England and Wales

The government plans to give its own download tally on Monday.

Presumably the “million” figure is the combined total from the Google/Apple Stores - it’s very impressive for the first few hours of availablity … :smiley: