Europeans don’t actually use the COVID-19 contact tracking app

After sitting cruelly for three months at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, about 20 governments across Europe have released Covid-19 contact tracking apps. We claim that these apps are an essential tool for keeping the new standards fragile.

There is only one problem. No one is using it.

German national development Corona warning appIs one of the most popular contact trackers in Europe and is estimated to have been downloaded by only 14.4% of the population. According to the released quote Wednesday by mobile analytics company Sensor Tower. (Companies like sensor towers Plugin the combination of public data from the app store, User data Converts to statistical model and provides estimates. )

Their Italian government estimates Immune app It will drop to 7.2 percent of the population. And French StopCovid Only 3% Up to 14 notifications Sent after June 2nd to inform users that they are near an infected person.

This is a problem. Dr. Dirk Brockmann, a researcher who specializes in computational epidemiology at the Robert Koch Institute (German version of the CDC) wrote to the motherboard by email. t use them

“The relationship between coverage X (percentage of users who participated) and reconstructed encounter Y (links between people) is a quadratic: Y = X ^ 2,” he wrote. “That is, if 10% of users have an app, then only 10% of their contacts are also users. 10% of 10% is just 1% of all their contacts.”

This means that only 10% of the population using the contact tracking app will miss 99% of all submissions. Recent research from Oxford We have estimated that at least 56% of the population must use the app for contact tracking to be effective.

Not so many, and again a question: why were such a wide range of Europeans hesitating to download a contact tracking app?

One reason is privacy. Contact tracking app ideas quickly Met skepticism By critics who felt they could be weaponized to spy on citizens.

It’s clear why developers quickly gave up the idea of ​​using location data. Instead, they Bluetooth low energy, This allows nearby devices to communicate data. Most contact tracking apps also do not store personal information such as name or phone number, and encryption keys broadcast by the user’s phone. Change every few minutes.. As an additional effort to increase transparency, you can find the source code for almost any app on GitHub.

French StopCovid app.

However, the German Corona-Warn-App A rare nod of approval from Europe’s most prominent hacker association, Chaos Computer Club and other corona apps, continue to be plagued by privacy questions.

For example, the French StopCovid app was blasted by scholars and security experts In open letter To use a centralized server. In contrast, German and Italian apps rely on decentralized API developed by Apple and Google..

Even if Europeans were already worried about using the contact tracking app, their failure on behalf of the government rarely increased their confidence.

For example in the Netherlands, Development company was given only 72 hours Come up with a suggestion for a contact tracking app. Naturally, all the 750 suggestions Later rejected It was not enough to meet security and privacy standards.

There is also the question of how well these apps actually work. so Survey of 800 Italians Nearly half of the respondents who chose not to download the national contact tracking app run by software analysis company SWG claimed it downloaded because they thought it was ineffective.

Even professionals have doubts.

Professor Ester Rodrigues Virgas of London Imperial College was working with a team of volunteers to develop a unique contact tracking app. Apple only on my team Allow one government-provided app per country It will be published on the App Store.

She says that one of the challenges in developing a contact tracking app is determining the criteria that actually make up a contact between two users. She considers the weight “Risk factor” Used, for example, in the Apple and Google APIs for oversimplification.

“I think it’s important to communicate the difficulty of actually creating an app that works well,” she told the motherboard. “Just because an app is there doesn’t mean it’s doing a good job.”

Also, it is difficult to know the actual data because few governments publish the test data.

After that, the atmosphere around the coronavirus changes. Almost all European blockades have been lifted, infection rates have fallen to a fraction of their March and April peaks, and borders have been reopened, returning Europeans to mimicking their normal lives.

As the pandemic becomes more of a headache, Europeans Few news related to coronavirusAnd, the basic means such as the 1.5m (6ft) rule, which was once a cardinal, is also available in Japan By vacationers..

But gradually in cases Start rising again across the continentThe ability to turn blind will not last forever, if there are still surges in the United States, and experts warn of a possible second wave in the fall. In that case, the now flapping contact-tracking app would be the case, especially if the government touted them as a way to prevent Europeans from returning to the locked lockdown they’ve endured for months. Could be a useful tool in.