I have it on my phone now, no issues. I'm wondering if it will do the job. I am thinking in therory, it should.
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Canada's 'COVID Alert' App Using Apple's Exposure Notification API Now Available
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japan is one of the countries that uses the google/apple developed Exposure Notification API.
on the japan ministry of health's (the developer of the local tracking app) page you can learn two data points:
1 the number of downloads to date of the local app that uses the google/apple API
2 the number of positives that persons infected have chosen to share
on july 31 as of 17:00, the number of downloads in japan of the local app was 9,960,000, and the number of shared positives was listed as 92.
the number of downloads in japan is growing by about 1 million per week.
there is no noticeable degradation of daily battery life on my phone since installing this.
countries which have released non-google/apple api versions are finding daily heavy battery life problems.
on the japan ministry of health's (the developer of the local tracking app) page you can learn two data points:
1 the number of downloads to date of the local app that uses the google/apple API
2 the number of positives that persons infected have chosen to share
on july 31 as of 17:00, the number of downloads in japan of the local app was 9,960,000, and the number of shared positives was listed as 92.
the number of downloads in japan is growing by about 1 million per week.
there is no noticeable degradation of daily battery life on my phone since installing this.
countries which have released non-google/apple api versions are finding daily heavy battery life problems.
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Yeah as long as you can download another state’s app, I see no reason it wouldn’t work. The only thing I’m wondering is let’s say you install Alabama’s exposure app, and you come in contact with someone who has Virginia’s app installed. Are the apps cross-compatible as long as they use the same API?
I installed it too, tried to set it up, and it says “it looks like your phone cannot support COVID Alert.”
It’s a shame that the USA doesn’t have the resources or technical know how to implement one of these apps using these APIs itself. Perhaps we could borrow the source code for the Swiss or Canadian apps.
Only 4 states have said they’ll participate so far. Virginia, Alabama, North Dakota, and South Carolina. Here’s a full list of which states are not participating, and which ones haven’t responded yet-
Which U.S. states are using Apple's Exposure Notification API for COVID-19 contact tracing? - 9to5Mac
Apple and Google announced plans to build COVID-19 tracing into iPhone and Android operating systems on April 10. The move marked a major partnership between the top two mobile operating system competitors in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19. Platform updates to enable the COVID-19...
Thanks. I'll look into those, but this Canadian one looks nice actually.Only 4 states have said they’ll participate so far. Virginia, Alabama, North Dakota, and South Carolina. Here’s a full list of which states are not participating, and which ones haven’t responded yet-
Which U.S. states are using Apple's Exposure Notification API for COVID-19 contact tracing? - 9to5Mac
Apple and Google announced plans to build COVID-19 tracing into iPhone and Android operating systems on April 10. The move marked a major partnership between the top two mobile operating system competitors in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19. Platform updates to enable the COVID-19...9to5mac.com
It's beyond retarded that states make their own. The only with this works is with scale.
I'm not arguing that. What I'm asking is how this specific app plays into that?
-What we know from the APIs are that it logs unique Bluetooth IDs that it comes into proximity with into a local database. There's no actual network communication happening during this phase.
-The app offers a way for you to submit your own Bluetooth ID as being COVID postive. That action can be subject to DNS attacks, but the DNS attack wouldn't be able to infer your unique BT ID.
-It also downloads a list of known positive IDs, and if that if is in your local DB of devices you've come into contact with will notify you. This list is public knowledge so there is no notable info to be gained from. And the check that happens against that list occurs locally on your device, so there is no network communication involved there.
The US is trying to hammer out a new bill related to COVID impacts between $1 trillion and $3 trillion yet there's no money in either bill to setup a contract tracing app like this in the US?
Yes it will track who you’re near etc, that will work. But you need to be tested positive in Ontario to receive the unique code to let the app know you confirmed positive, therefore no one will be able to test positive in the app outside of Canada and no one will receive notifications. Essentially the app is useless outside of Canada.
This is accurate. Doesn't matter which app you use for exposure logging...but if someone tests positive in the US, they can't report the positive test on the Canadian app [since they don't have the code], thus they can't self-report that they've tested positive and alert those that they were near.
The problem is, you need a central agency that maintains the database of identifiers that are associated with positive tests (this is relatively easy)...
AND that agency needs to be a gatekeeper for adding identifiers for positive tests into that database - you don’t want anyone to just be able to tap a button in the app that says, “yep, I’m infected!”, because a surprising number of idiots will do do “just for fun”, or “to see what would happen”, or because they actually want to damage the system so that they can then say “see, the system doesn’t work.”
So, you need some sort of lock in the app that requires authorization to open, in order to say, “yep, I tested positive”, so people don’t trigger it on a whim. One of the most commonly discussed methods (though certainly not the only one that would work), is to supply the lab/agency that gives you back the test results from your COVID test, with software they can use to generate a one-time-use QR code to open that lock (if your test is negative, they don’t give you a code). So, you get the test back, and if it says you’re positive, then you open the app and point the camera at the QR code that you were given along with your positive result, and then the app talks to the central database and submits the anonymous random identifiers your phone has broadcast over the past few weeks, to add to the database.
(And everyone’s phone periodically downloads that database, and compares the list of identifiers your phone has seen nearby against the ones in the database, and if there are any matches, it lets you know you may have been exposed, and gives you any country/state-specific next steps you should take.)
So the agency that controls the database of identifiers for an area needs to have some connection with the lab or agency where you got your test. If you live in a different country, you’ll be able to see that you are not known to have come into contact with infected people in the other country, but that tells you nothing about coming into contact with infected people in your country. It’ll probably give you a false sense of security, if anything (“oh good, no alerts”), when you can’t get any alerts for anyone nearby, only those from the other country.
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Also, if your government isn't providing a way to notifiy the app of positive covid cases then it wont do anything. You can think of these apps as having 3 main components
- The contact tracing API which creates a local DB of all the Unique BT IDs you've com into contact with
- A covid positive submission process
- A process to download a list of unique BT IDs of confirmed covid positives to cross-reference against the list of devices you've come in contact with
a great question.
i think the answer is likely no, given how uncoordinated individual states are, and in light of the lack of any desire to coordinate and lead on the national level, there is no central clearing data base.
a regionally coordinated database of case IDs of positives to testing would be workable and effective.
say, a NY, NJ, Connecticut tri-state coordinated approach makes sense for the greater NY area.
but a public health crisis that doesnt need to stop for gas at a state borders really demands a federal level coordinated response.
later edit: on aug 1 google/apple announced revisions to their api that allows interoperability between countries that have COID-19 apps that use their api
news reports don't specifically mention if that interoperability could apply among USA states but it seems promising that it could.
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Well this is a big cluster. Instead of one central federal app, we're going to have several apps competing with each other in different states. Ugh.
That’s like saying Walmart has a monopoly on what they put on their shelves.
As mentioned in the article, iOS 14 doesn't have the API required for the app to work.
Yeah. Call me crazy but I'll take my chances against a virus that 99.9% of people survive. lol.
But not necessarily. I didn't enable push notifications since I'm fine going into the app. But even if I did, it's a local push.
The app maintains it's contact DB locally, that never gets uploaded to the central server. What happens is a list of new confirmed positives gets downloaded by the app. The app then (locally) checks the list of known positives and creates a local push if a known positive is on your list.
Its really disingenuous to try and call into question their claim that "COVID Alert has no way of knowing". By your logic, COVID app, whether you install it or not knows everything already because everything you listed is completely external from the app and would work just the same if you never installed it.
Walmart has a monopoly on Great Value brand!! The horror! ?