Mobile device tracking is now available in Minnesota to allow COVID-19 patients to alert close contacts that they may have been exposed to the infectious disease.
Gov. Tim Walz will unveil the COVIDaware MN system on Monday afternoon and appeal to Minnesotans to voluntarily use the tracking tool to slow the spread of the pandemic that has caused more than 3,200 deaths and more than 270,000 lab-confirmed infections.
“The more individuals that download the app, the better we can inform our community about potential exposures,” according to Minnesota’s COVIDaware website.
Minnesota leaders hesitated to use this technology as part of their pandemic response for months due to privacy concerns and did not support a crowdsourcing COVID-19 app developed by HealthPartners this spring.
The new website stresses that COVIDaware does not disclose personal information — only identifying people by random and rotating ID numbers — and leaves users with the choice of whether to anonymously alert close contacts to their viral exposure risks.
The app is based on public health research indicating that most transmissions of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 occur when people have spent 15 minutes within 6 feet of one another.
Bluetooth technology first enabled on Apple and Android mobile platforms this spring makes it possible to identify such recent close contacts for individuals after they have been infected.
The app uses Bluetooth signal strength between devices as an estimate of whether people were within 6 feet of one another. Only users of the app will be able to anonymously notify one another of exposure risks.
More than a dozen states now use the technology, with many unveiling similar COVID-19 tracking tools in recent weeks. North Dakota was an early adopter of the approach last spring, converting an app designed to link fans of North Dakota State Bison football into Care19 Alert.
As in many states, the promise has been hampered by slow uptake. In North Dakota, fewer than 5% of people have used the app. And even among users who end up with COVID-19, some don’t opt to anonymously notify close contacts of their exposure risks.
Adoption has been far broader in Asia and in some European nations.
Notifications of viral exposures in Minnesota right now generally occur through the resource-intensive process of contact tracing, in which local and state public health workers interview people with COVID-19 to identify their close contacts.
The exponential growth of COVID-19 has outpaced the state’s expansion of its contact tracing network. State Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said last week that Minnesota might need to reconsider its use of contact tracing workers because of the rapid increase in infections and the struggle to reach all infected patients quickly.
The COVIDaware website notes that the app does not replace contact tracing.
In Minnesota, the first attempt to confront COVID-19 with mobile device technology came from Bloomington-based HealthPartners with an app called SafeDistance. It used a crowdsourcing approach, allowing people to anonymously report when they had respiratory symptoms so that people living nearby could assess their risks.
Uptake was slowed because the app was not made available on Google’s Play Store for Android phones. Developers at the time said they needed an endorsement from the Minnesota Department of Health to provide the app on that platform. State health officials had concerns that users would have a false sense of security if the app showed no illnesses in their immediate areas.
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November 23, 2020 at 10:56PM
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Minnesota launches COVID-19 tracking app via mobile devices - Minneapolis Star Tribune
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