New Covid-19 app could prevent hospital admissions and save lives

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The national health department will on Wednesday launch a life-saving mobile application, Covid Alert SA, to strengthen South Africa’s digital contact tracing efforts.

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“For every 100 infections we are able to prevent using this technology, we could prevent as many as 15 to 20 hospital admissions and save two lives,” he said.

Health spokesperson Popo Maja said the department has to date deployed teams to conduct manual contact tracing in every district. He said the Covid Alert SA app will complement and strengthen these existing methods, as a tool to enable the instant notification of contacts following a positive test. Covid Alert SA is built on the exposure notification Application Programming Interface developed by Apple and Google to enable contact tracing through mobile phones.

Maja said the app will be fully privacy-preserving, in line with the requirements of the API, and does not collect any personally identifiable information or trace a user’s location. “When a user tests positive, they are requested to report their diagnosis anonymously in the Covid Alert SA app. When the user does so, all other users with whom they have been in contact for the past 14 days will immediately be notified of their exposure and prompted through the care pathway,” he said.Director-general of healthsaid: “Global experience has demonstrated the risk of resurgence once restrictions on social and economic activity are lifted.

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