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COVID-19 apps are mobile apps designed to aid contact tracing with the intention of suppressing the infectious disease Coronavirus disease 2019. Numerous applications have been fielded, some with official government support in particular territories and jurisdictions. A number of frameworks for building contact tracing apps have been developed; on 10 April 2020, the market leaders in mobile devices, Google and Apple, jointly announced that they would integrate functionality to support such apps directly into their Android and iOS operating systems.
In China, the Chinese government, in conjunction with Alipay, has deployed an app[ clarification needed ] across 200 Chinese cities. [1]
In South Korea, the Corona 100m app has been developed to notify people of nearby cases. [2]
In Singapore, an app called TraceTogether is being used. [3] Additionally an open source digital contact tracing protocol, BlueTrace, was developed. [4]
Russia has introduced a tracking app for patients diagnosed with COVID-19 living in Moscow, designed to ensure they do not leave home. [5]
Czechia has launched a Singapore-inspired tracking app called eRouška (eFacemask). The app was developed by local IT community, released as open source and will be handed over to the government. [6]
North Macedonia launched "StopKorona!", a Bluetooth-based app to trace exposure with potentially infected persons and provide a fast response to healthcare authorities. The app was developed and donated by a Macedonian IT company. [7]
In the United Kingdom, Matthew Gould, chief executive of NHSX, the government body responsible for policy regarding technology in the NHS, said in late March 2020 that the organisation was looking seriously at an app that would alert people if they had recently been in contact with someone testing positive for the virus after scientists advising the government suggested it "could play a critical role" in limiting lockdowns. [8]
A similar app is planned in Ireland. [9]
Privacy campaigners have voiced their concern regarding the implications of mass surveillance using coronavirus apps, in particular about whether surveillance infrastructure created to deal with the coronavirus pandemic will be dismantled once the threat has passed. [10] Amnesty International and over 100 other organizations issued a statement calling for limits on this kind of surveillance. [11] The German Chaos Computer Club (CCC) [12] and Reporters Without Borders (Reporter ohne Grenzen) (RSF) [13] issued checklists.
Some countries are using network-based location tracking instead of apps, eliminating both the need to download an app and the ability to avoid tracking. In Israel, network-based tracking has been approved. [14] However, network-based solutions have significant potential privacy problems. [15]
Centralised protocols, where a central server must be trusted with all or part of a social graph, are prevalent, such as Singapore's TraceTogether. [16] Countries including Germany are reportedly preparing centralised protocols, although these have not yet been released. [17]
As of 7 April 2020, over a dozen expert groups were working on privacy-friendly solutions, such as using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to log a user's proximity to other cellphones. [11] Users then receive a message if they've been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. [11]
A group of European researchers, including from the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, are under the umbrella of the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project, [18] developing a BLE-based app to serve this purpose that is designed to avoid the need for intrusive surveillance by the state. [19] [20] [21] However, PEPP-PT is a co-ordination effort which contains both centralised and decentralised approaches, and is not a single protocol. [22]
Decentralised protocols include Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-PPT/DP-3T), [17] [23] Contact Event Numbers (CEN), Privacy Sensitive Protocols And Mechanisms for Mobile Contact Tracing (PACT) [24] and others. In these protocols, identifiable personal data never leaves the device, and all matching happens on-device.
The Privacy Group at MIT Media Lab has been developing SafePaths, [25] a platform for using privacy-preserving techniques when collecting and using location or path intersection data to track the spread of COVID-19. It is based on research from the whitepaper "Apps Gone Rogue: Maintaining Personal Privacy in an Epidemic" released in March 2020. [26]
On 9 April 2020, the Singaporean government announced that it had open-sourced the BlueTrace protocol used by its official government app. [27]
On 10 April 2020, Google and Apple, the companies that control the Android and iOS mobile platforms, announced an initiative for privacy-preserving contact tracing based on a combination of Bluetooth Low Energy technology and privacy-preserving cryptography. [28] [29] They also published specifications of the core technologies used in the system. [30] [31] According to Apple and Google, the system is intended to be rolled out in three stages: [32] [33]
Name | Functionality | Platform | Author/promoter | Licence | Homepage | Ref |
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Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project | privacy-preserving contact tracing | platform-independent | Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Robert Koch Institute, Technical University of Berlin, TU Dresden, University of Erfurt, Vodafone Germany | multiple protocols, closed source, private specifications | https://www.pepp-pt.org/ | [34] |
Google / Apple privacy-preserving tracing project | privacy-preserving contact tracing | platform-independent | Google, Apple Inc. | public specification | https://www.apple.com/covid19/contacttracing | [35] |
Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-3T) | privacy-preserving contact tracing | platform-independent, reference implementation in Python 3 | EPFL, ETHZ, KU Leuven, TU Delft, University College London, CISPA, University of Oxford, University of Torino / ISI Foundation | publicly-developed Apache 2.0 reference implementation | https://github.com/DP-3T | [36] |
BlueTrace / OpenTrace | privacy-preserving contact tracing | platform-independent | Singapore Government Digital Services | public specification, GPL 3 code | bluetrace.io | [37] |
Country | Name | Functionality | Platform | Author/promoter | Licence | Homepage | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Australia | Coronavirus Australia | information, isolation registration | Android, iOS | Delv Pty Ltd | Proprietary | health.gov.au | [38] |
Austria | Stopp Corona | contact tracing, medical reporting | Android, iOS | [39] | |||
China | unknown | contact tracing | Alipay | [40] | |||
Czech Republic | Mapy | contact tracing | [41] [42] | ||||
Czech Republic | eRouška | contact tracing | erouska.cz | [43] [6] | |||
India | Aarogya Setu | contact tracing | Android, iOS | Indian federal government / National Informatics Centre | aarogyasetu.in | [44] | |
India | COVA Punjab | contact tracing | Android, iOS | Government of Punjab | [45] | ||
India | COVID-19 Quarantine Monitor | contact tracing, geofencing | TBA | Pixxon AI Solutions / Government of Tamil Nadu | [45] | ||
India | COVID19 Feedback | feedback | Android | Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology | [45] | ||
India | Corona Kavach | information | Android (discontinued) | Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology | [45] [46] | ||
India | Mahakavach | contact tracing | Maharashtra government | [45] | |||
India | Quarantine Watch | contact tracing | [45] | ||||
India | Test Yourself Goa | self diagnostic | Android | Goa Ministry of Health | [45] | ||
India | Test Yourself Puducherry | self diagnostic | [45] | ||||
India, Kerala | GoK Direct | contact tracing | [47] [48] | ||||
Israel | Hamagen | contact tracing | Android, iOS | [49] [50] | |||
North Macedonia | StopKorona! | contact tracing | Android, iOS | [7] | |||
Norway | Infect Stop | contact tracing | Android, iOS | Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI) | [51] | ||
Russia (Moscow) | "Social Monitoring" | contact tracing | Android, iOS | Moscow city government | [52] | ||
Singapore | TraceTogether | contact tracing | Android, iOS | Government Digital Services agency of Government Technology Agency of Singapore | compatible with open source OpenTrace / BlueTrace framework | [53] | |
South Korea | Corona 100m | contact tracing | Bae Wong-Seok | [54] [55] | |||
United Kingdom | Covid Symptom Tracker | self-diagnostic | Android, iOS | King’s College London, Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals, Zoe Global Limited | [56] | ||
United Kingdom | NHS App | multipurpose | Android, iOS | National Health Service | www.nhs.uk | [56] | |
United States | COVID-19 Apple App | information | iOS | Apple Inc. / U.S. Federal Government | [57] | ||
United States | How We Feel | self-diagnostic | Android, iOS | Pinterest and others | [58] | ||
United States | Private Kit: Safe Paths | contact tracing | Android, iOS | MIT | safepaths.mit.edu | [59] |
In public health, contact tracing is the process of identification of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person ("contacts") and subsequent collection of further information about these contacts. By tracing the contacts of infected individuals, testing them for infection, treating the infected and tracing their contacts in turn, public health aims to reduce infections in the population. Diseases for which contact tracing is commonly performed for include tuberculosis, vaccine-preventable infections like measles, sexually transmitted infections, blood-borne infections, some serious bacterial infections, and novel infections. The goals of contact tracing are:
Zoom Video Communications, Inc., organized in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California, provides software, including a mobile app, for videotelephony, online chat, and business telephone systems.
Signal is a cross-platform encrypted messaging service developed by the Signal Foundation and Signal Messenger LLC. It uses the Internet to send one-to-one and group messages, which can include files, voice notes, images and videos. Its mobile apps can also make one-to-one voice and video calls, and the Android version can optionally function as an SMS app.
Clearview AI is an American technology company that provides facial recognition software, which they claim is marketed primarily for law enforcement agencies. The company has developed technology that can match faces to a database of more than three billion images scraped from the Internet, including social media applications. Founded by Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz, the company maintained a low profile until late 2019, when its usage by law enforcement was reported on.
The 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Singapore is part of the ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed on 23 January. To combat COVID-19, a multi-ministerial committee was formed on 22 January with Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong and Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong as the co-chairs and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Heng Swee Keat as advisors.
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The 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic was confirmed to have reached Iceland in February 2020. As of 12 April 2020, the total number of cases registered is 1,711, of which 933 have recovered and 8 have died.With a total population of 364,260, the infection rate is 1 case per 213 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world, though this is attributed to more tests have been carried out per capita in Iceland than any other country. These include a screening of the general population run by Icelandic company deCODE genetics to determine the true spread of the virus in the community.
The 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Jamaica is part of an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On 12 January, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, who had initially come to the attention of the WHO on 31 December 2019. Unlike SARS outbreak of 2003, the case fatality ratio for COVID-19 has been much lower, but the transmission has been significantly greater, with a significant total death toll.
During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, human rights violations including censorship, discrimination, arbitrary detention, xenophobia were reported from different parts of the world. Amnesty International has responded that "Human rights violations hinder, rather than facilitate, responses to public health emergencies, and undercut their efficiency." The World Health Organization has stated that stay-at-home measures for slowing down the pandemic must not be done at the expense of human rights.
The 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. state of Nebraska is part of an ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019, a novel infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. As of April 12, 2020, the Nebraska Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) has confirmed 814 cases and 17 deaths in the state.
The 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic was confirmed to have reached Liberia in March 2020.
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The 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic was first confirmed in the Indian state of West Bengal on 17 March 2020, with first positive case in Kolkata. As of 13 April 2020, the state has reported 152 COVID-19 positive cases, including 116 active cases, 7 deaths and 29 recoveries.
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COVID-19 surveillance involves monitoring the spread of the coronavirus disease in order to establish the patterns of disease progression. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends active surveillance, with focus of case finding, testing and contact tracing in all transmission scenarios. COVID-19 surveillance is expected to monitor epidemiological trends, rapidly detect new cases, and based on this information, provide epidemiological information to conduct risk assessment and guide disease preparedness.
Aarogya Setu is a COVID-19 tracking mobile application developed by the National Informatics Centre that comes under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
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BlueTrace is an open source application protocol that facilitates digital contact tracing of infected participants. Initially developed by the Singaporean Government for the TraceTogether app and the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, it has since been considered for adoption by multiple other countries including New Zealand and Australia. A core principle of the protocol is the preservation of privacy and health authority cooperation.
TraceTogether is an app released by the Singaporean Government that allows for digital contact tracing using the custom BlueTrace protocol. The app was developed by the Government Digital Services agency and released on 20 March 2020. Since release the app has been downloaded over a 500,000 times. The app and protocol were also open sourced as OpenTrace and BlueTrace respectively.