U.S. States Are Rolling Out COVID-19 Contact Tracing Apps. Months of Evidence From Europe Shows They’re No Silver Bullet
that in order for a voluntary contact-tracing app to control an epidemic without any other severe measures being taken, around 60% of any given population would need to download it, use it, and follow its instructions.
Experts instead say the apps are useful as one weapon in a larger arsenal of measures to combat COVID-19. “This app can and will save lives, it will prevent infections, and it’s an additive thing that supplements other interventions like social distancing, hygiene, mask wearing, and much more testing,” says Christophe Fraser, an Oxford University professor, referring to England and Wales’ contact tracing app, which is based on Google and Apple’s system. “I think the lesson for the U.S.
While prominent epidemiologists and privacy researchers have given the green light to decentralized apps based on Google and Apple’s system, the task of convincing large numbers of people to download the apps is still a work in progress. “Is it going to steal my data?” was the first on the list. “No,” he wrote. “It’s completely private. All your data stays on the phone, if you delete the app, you delete the data.”Bonsall, also a scientific adviser to the U.K.’s Test and Trace program, quickly saw his post receive some 3,000 likes and thousands of comments, many of them raising further misconceptions. “There are lots of rumors that are not true about the app,” he says. “They were not substantiated, from what I saw going on.
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