Virginia launches first COVID-19 exposure notification app in US using Google-Apple API
On Wednesday, the Virginia Department of Health released its official COVID-19 exposure notification app, and it is the first in the United States to use the Google and Apple API.
COVIDWISE app by the Virginia Department of Health
Apple and Google engineersteamed up to create a cross-platform API for tracing the spread of coronavirus. The API was officially released in May 2020 and has seen little adoption since.
Canada was one of the first countries with such an app, releasing it at the end of July. The app relied upon Canada's health system to inform the app of a diagnosis.
The Virginia app is called COVIDWISE and works similarly. When you have been diagnosed by a doctor, you must complete a questionnaire in the app to alert other users of the diagnosis. When logging this data, it is only to verify a positive result, and does not expose your personal information to others.
COVIDWISE is very barebones by design
When the app is enabled, it will run in the background with no interaction from the user. If the phone determines that you have been close to another individual using the app for an extended period of time, it will store those credentials shared by the other phone.
The system uses bluetooth to exchange tokens and will not have noticeable effects on battery life.
The iOS 14 beta 4 has a dedicated settings section for exposure notification, but it is still not reliable. For the COVIDWISE app to work properly, ensure you are running iOS 13.6.
COVIDWISE app by the Virginia Department of Health
Apple and Google engineersteamed up to create a cross-platform API for tracing the spread of coronavirus. The API was officially released in May 2020 and has seen little adoption since.
Canada was one of the first countries with such an app, releasing it at the end of July. The app relied upon Canada's health system to inform the app of a diagnosis.
The Virginia app is called COVIDWISE and works similarly. When you have been diagnosed by a doctor, you must complete a questionnaire in the app to alert other users of the diagnosis. When logging this data, it is only to verify a positive result, and does not expose your personal information to others.
COVIDWISE is very barebones by design
When the app is enabled, it will run in the background with no interaction from the user. If the phone determines that you have been close to another individual using the app for an extended period of time, it will store those credentials shared by the other phone.
The system uses bluetooth to exchange tokens and will not have noticeable effects on battery life.
The iOS 14 beta 4 has a dedicated settings section for exposure notification, but it is still not reliable. For the COVIDWISE app to work properly, ensure you are running iOS 13.6.
Comments
Best parts:
1. It works in any location.
Note the “works in any location” part of this design. All you need is a meaningful pool of users such as:
1,500 employees at California company A
or
We’re all anxious to get an app for contact tracing, but if we’re going through the trouble of installing and configuring an app on thousands of phones, let’s make sure it will work. If you get people to install this one, are they going to switch over to a new app that works once it is released. These people will feel they are covered and ignore any more “install this tracing app” messages from their corporate IT or HR groups.
Thanks Google!
The only thing that's real is Google using this opportunistically.
They can’t agree at city or county level imagine GLOBALLY...
The states are not required to have one they can keep ignoring the API like they have been doing.