U.S. States Are Rolling Out COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps. Months of Evidence From Europe Shows They ’re No Silver Bullet

On Oct. 1, New York state released an app that can notify you if you’ve come into contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19. Called “COVID Alert NY,” the app is one of 10 currently active in states around the U.S. that are based on Google and Apple’s decentralized contact tracing system, which was developed to maintain privacy while also giving health authorities a potentially powerful new tool to clamp down on outbreaks of the virus. “Everybody’s wondering, ‘I was next to this person, I was next to that person,’ but this can actually give you some data,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announcing the app’s release. “I think it’s going to not only bring contact tracing to a new level, but it’s going to give people comfort.” Contact tracing—either via an app or the old-fashioned method of interviewing people—is crucial to notify people who don’t know they’ve been exposed to the virus, so they can isolate. But it always involves a tradeoff between privacy and public health. In Asia, countries like South Korea used contact tracing with great effect to keep a lid on their epidemics, but at significant cost to individuals’ privacy. As well as deploying legions of interviewers, South Korean authorities also used phone logs, card transaction records and surveillance camera footage to monitor infected citizens’ locations and find their contact...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature Londontime Source Type: news