Google and Apple teamed up on using smartphones to track coronavirus infections. But the systems are only available in a few states, where they're being used by a tiny percentage of the population.
It swaps Bluetooth signals with other phones around it. But it only interacts with the phones of people who've opted in to the system and have their Bluetooth on. It keeps track of those encounters for the last 14 days, but to protect each user's privacy, it doesn't record the exact time, location or phone number of the devices.
Then the fall semester started at James Madison University. Students flooded back to Harrisonburg. Campus reopened. And soon there were moreVirginia Unveils App To Aid Contact Tracing"It was a little scary," she says. She'd been trying to limit her outings to essential activities. She hadn't been out to large gatherings, and she couldn't figure out why she had so many potential exposures all at once.
Virginia is by far the national leader in the use of these apps. So far, more than 500,000 people have downloaded the state's app. Stover says despite some of the initial confusion about the push notifications, the rollout is going well.
But there have been greater privacy concerns about the GPS-based apps and far fewer downloads. The Google/Apple system is only available to government health departments. Each state must choose to opt in and then build or buy its own app."That really comes back to how public health operates in the U.S.," says Vivian Singletary, director of the Public Health Informatics Institute in Atlanta, which has hosted several forums for public health officials on this technology. The U.S.
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