Government shutting down COVID Alert app, sources say
The federal authorities will probably be shutting down the COVID Alert app and will achieve this as early as this week, authorities sources have advised CBC Information.
The sources spoke to CBC Information on the situation they not be named as a result of they don’t seem to be approved to debate the matter publicly. The Globe and Mail first reported the information.
The cellphone app, which was launched in the summertime of 2020, is designed to alert customers to attainable COVID-19 publicity. Customers who have examined constructive for the virus use a one-time key on the app to report their diagnoses. Their telephones then trade codes with different telephones which have the app put in, and notify those that have been inside two metres of an contaminated particular person for quarter-hour or longer.
The federal authorities inspired use of the app all through the pandemic. The app does not accumulate private info similar to places, addresses and cellphone contacts.
COVID Alert has been downloaded simply 6,893,423 occasions and solely 57,704 one-time keys to report an infection have been used, according to the government. Canada has seen 3.87 million COVID-19 infections and 41,000 associated deaths because the pandemic started.
Specialists have questioned the app’s effectiveness in limiting the unfold of COVID-19, saying it could have required way more downloads and info from customers with a view to work. The emergence of the extra infectious Omicron variant may additionally have harm the app’s capability to trace infections.
Customers in British Columbia, Alberta, Nunavut and Yukon are unable to get one-time codes to report COVID-19 infections. There’s additionally been confusion about whether or not the app is functioning.
The app value $20 million. Most of that cash — $15.9 million — was spent on promotion and promoting, whereas $3.5 million went to growing and sustaining the app.
