{"id":12742,"date":"2020-04-24T21:04:27","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T01:04:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=12742"},"modified":"2020-05-19T20:53:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T00:53:57","slug":"how-an-alberta-contact-tracing-app-would-work-to-help-in-fight-against-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/how-an-alberta-contact-tracing-app-would-work-to-help-in-fight-against-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"How an Alberta contact-tracing app would work to help in fight against COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Albertans will soon be able to use an app that could help track if they have been in contact with a person who has COVID-19.<\/p>\n

The province said it\u2019s in the final testing phase of a new contact-tracing app.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is simply taking our decades-old public health approach into the 21st century,\u201d chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Thursday.<\/p>\n

The app is voluntary and the provincial government said information collected is stored within people\u2019s phones and not with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe benefit of this app is in speeding up information-gathering to support the contact-tracing work that our public health workers are already doing,\u201d Hinshaw explained.<\/p>\n

The app would use Bluetooth technology to track when you come in the vicinity of other phones also running the app.<\/p>\n

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The idea is \u2014 if a person using it tests positive for COVID-19 \u2014 health authorities could in turn notify any phones that had been near that person, and potentially figure out where the infection occurred.<\/p>\n

One expert said a key issue with the Bluetooth signal is it acts as an \u201cidentifier.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ Sign up for our Health IQ newsletter for the latest coronavirus updates<\/a> ]<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYour phone always sends out the same identifier \u2014 and so somebody could use this to track you,\u201d Urs Hengartner, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, said on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why it\u2019s very important not to broadcast the same Bluetooth identifier continuously. Instead, it should be a random value \u2014 a value that changes over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said these apps are never going to be perfect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s going to be so-called false positives and false negatives,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine you\u2019re living in an apartment building \u2014 and so your neighbour ends up with COVID-19 and Bluetooth goes through walls. Now your phone tells you you better be careful like you may have COVID-19 too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s also a wall between you and your neighbour, so you could not have gotten infected \u2014 this would be a false positive, so people get erroneously alerted and anxious.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Hengartner also noted there has to be a high number of people also using the app for it to be effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen some numbers saying that at least 60 per cent of the population need to have this app,\u201d he explained. \u201cPopular apps tend to be on 10 per cent of people\u2019s smartphones.<\/p>\n

\u201cSingapore has deployed to some degree, and they had only like 11 per cent of the people using this app \u2014 and they ended up with a second wave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Information and Privacy Commissioner Jill Clayton said she had not yet received detailed information about the app, despite being provided with a \u201chigh-level overview about the goals of the program earlier this month.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be important for the Government of Alberta to provide Albertans with a clear, easy to understand description of privacy practices,\u201d Clayton said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cKnowing in plain language what types of personal information may be collected, how that information will be used and in what circumstances it will be disclosed will assist people in choosing to opt-in to using the app.\u201d<\/p>\n

The province said the app will be available in the coming weeks once the trials are finished.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u00a9 2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albertans will soon be able to use an app that could help track if they have been in contact with a person who has COVID-19.The province said it\u2019s in the final testing phase of a new contact-tracing app.\u201cThis is simply taking our decades-old public health approach into the 21st century,\u201d chief medical officer of health…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[120,162,161,157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12742"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12742"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12742\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16145,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12742\/revisions\/16145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}