Apple and Google recently announced a joint plan to help fight the current Coronavirus crisis. The plan includes COVID-19 contact tracing technology in the form of Android and iOS apps. While the initiative appears like a positive step to combat Coronavirus, it isn't a perfect one and can have a couple of issues. For this, Apple tries to provide more details regarding the COVID-19 contact tracing technology. Read on to know more.
Apple COVID-19 contact tracing tech
According to a report by The Verge, Apple has provided answers to certain questions the recent Apple-Google collaboration raised. There are three concerns apart from the privacy issues posed by the Apple-Google contact tracing tech.
The first one is about whether or not the app will be downloaded by people. In the first phase of the initiative, Apple and Google will launch APIs and then their respective apps. In the second phase, Google and Apple will integrate the technology in Android and iOS so it gets easier for people to use. In both cases, users will be required to download public health official apps, and this raises a concern. We are not sure if people are willing to download the apps.
The effort to introduce APIs for Coronavirus contact tracing is a good one but people understanding this and downloading the apps is a problem. This problem can be solved if users just have to update the OS, get the contact tracing tech and opt-in for it, and doesn't require to download the additional health official app. Apple suggested this can be done and people won't have to download additional apps to get the proximity event of 164 days.
The second problem is how reliable Bluetooth signals are. There can be times when the Bluetooth signals can give out false notifications and might not be able to detect infection in other cases. Apple suggests that the health apps will include the duration of proximity and can tell the proximity event (when a user was close to a smartphone). The duration could be of 5 minutes, meaning after a 5-minute interval, users will be able to know about a person in their proximity. However, there isn't any word on how the tech will work in different use cases.
Lastly, another question that has been raised is whether or not the contact tracing tech is better than the traditional way of contact tracing. Of course, the manual way of contact tracing has its own downsides and if the Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing tech works and solves issues it poses, it can prove useful in many ways and allow for a convenient way of COVID-19 contact tracing even when the lockdown ends.
We will have to wait until the technology and more information by both Apple and Google is released.
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