Engineers at Apple and Google have teamed up to create a decentralized COVID-19 contact tracing tool that will help individuals determine whether they have been exposed to someone with the disease, the companies announced in April.
Here’s an illustration of how the Apple – Google coronavirus contact tracing is designed to work:
9to5Mac is tracking which U.S. states are committed to supporting the Exposure Notifications API in iOS and Android apps, which states are against using the contact tracing method, and which states are undecided.
Each public health authority in each country or region must first agree to adopt Apple and Google’s Exposure Notification API. Next the health authority must create an iOS and Android app for their region dedicated to supporting Exposure Notifications.
In the United States, rather than creating a single contact tracing app, the decision to support Exposure Notifications is made by each state’s public health authority…
3 of 50 States Participating
Alabama, South Carolina, and North Dakota are among the first U.S. states to express interest in Apple and Google’s Exposure Notifications API for assisting COVID-19 contact tracing.
MacDailyNews Take: So far, this is shaping up to be the rousing success that we expected.
6 percent of U.S. states plan to support the Exposure Notifications API. To date, 23 out of 195 countries (11.8%) have shown at least some interest in the Apple-Google exposure notification API.
From the outset, we called this digital COVID-19 contact tracing scheme pie-in-the-sky piffle.
How to enable/disable COVID-19 contact tracing in iOS 13.5
1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap on Privacy.
3. Tap on Health.
4. Tap on COVID-19 Exposure Logging.
5. Tap the toggle to turn the feature on/off.
COVID-19 Exposure Logging is set to “Off” by default.
Does MDN realize that Google Maps, Yelp, etc. don’t work “out of the box” after download either? You need to Opt In to location services and notifications with EVERY 3rd party app in the App Store. COVID tracking will be no different. When you launch the app you’ll get a notification that it needs authorization to work.
Sherlock.
MDN obviously understands that as they’ve explained it at least 10 times already. That’s not the point anyway. The point is that digital contact-tracing won’t work, as MDN has also explained at least 10 times already.
Just like 9/11 forever altered the way we conduct travel, covid-19 has illustrated the need for some sort of contact tracing infrastructure. I totally get people’s reluctance to give companies like Apple tracking data. But you know what? I be some of the very same people crying out about “Exposure Notifications” are using Google Maps, and Gmail. With Google you are 100% their product. At least has less of a dog in that race with it’s business model around hardware and the cloud.