{"id":128137,"date":"2020-12-07T20:51:02","date_gmt":"2020-12-07T17:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/despite-promise-few-in-us-adopting-covid-19-exposure-apps-2\/"},"modified":"2020-12-07T20:51:02","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T17:51:02","slug":"despite-promise-few-in-us-adopting-covid-19-exposure-apps-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/despite-promise-few-in-us-adopting-covid-19-exposure-apps-2\/","title":{"rendered":"#Despite promise, few in US adopting COVID-19 exposure apps"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Despite promise, few in US adopting COVID-19 exposure app<\/a>s<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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RALEIGH, NC \u2014 Six months ago, Apple and Google\u00a0introduced a new smartphone tool<\/a>\u00a0designed to notify people who might have been exposed to the coronavirus, without disclosing any personal information. But for the most part, Americans haven\u2019t been all that interested.<\/p>\n

Fewer than half of US states and territories \u2014 18 in total \u2014 have made such technology<\/a> widely available. And according to a data analysis by The Associated Press, the vast majority of Americans in such locations haven\u2019t activated the tool.<\/p>\n

Data from 16 states, Guam and the District of Columbia shows that 8.1 million people had utilized the technology as of late November. That\u2019s about one in 14 of the 110 million residents in those regions.<\/p>\n

In theory, such apps could bolster one of the most difficult tasks in pandemic control: Tracing the contacts of people infected with the coronavirus in order to test and isolate them if necessary. In practice, however, widespread COVID-19 misinformation, the complexity of the technology, overwhelmed health workers needed to quickly confirm a diagnosis and a general<\/a> lack of awareness have all presented obstacles, experts and users say.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of things working against it,\u201d said Jessica Vitak, an associate professor at the University of Maryland\u2019s College of Information Studies. \u201cUnfortunately, in the US, COVID has been politicized far more than in any other country. I think that\u2019s affecting people\u2019s willingness to use tools to track it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlotte, North Carolina, lawyer Evan Metaxatos was thrilled to learn in November about his state\u2019s tracking app, called SlowCOVIDNC. He immedia<\/a>tely downloaded it and got his parents and pregnant wife to follow suit.<\/p>\n

\"Evan
Evan Metaxatos.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But they\u2019re still outliers in the state, which launched the app in September with little fanfare. Of roughly 10.5 million state residents, only 482,003 had installed it through the end of November.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t work great until everyone\u2019s using it, but it\u2019s better than nothing,\u201d Metaxatos said.<\/p>\n

Apple and Google co-created the primary technology behind such apps, which use Bluetooth wireless signals to anonymously detect when two phones have spent time in close proximity. If an app user tests positive for the virus, that person\u2019s phone can\u00a0trigger a notification<\/a>\u00a0to other people they\u2019ve spent time near \u2014 without revealing names, locations, or any other identifying information.<\/p>\n

In states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and Washington, as well as Washington, DC, iPhone users don\u2019t even have to download an app. In fact, Apple prompts users via pop-ups to activate the notification system by adjusting their phone settings.<\/p>\n

In these states, adoption rates are notably higher. But even in the most successful state, Connecticut, only about a fifth of all residents have opted into this tracking. On Friday, Washington said that\u00a0more than 1 million state residents<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 roughly 13 percent of its population \u2014 had activated the technology in its first four days.<\/p>\n

Virginia\u2019s COVIDWISE app launched on Aug. 5 and was the first to go live. Since then, fewer than one in ten residents have downloaded it, though the state estimates almost 20 percent of Virginians between the ages of 18 and 65 with a smartphone have done so. Delaware\u2019s app downloads account for about 7 percent of the state\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

All other US states analyzed have much lower adoption rates.<\/p>\n

New York launched its app on Oct. 1. It recently surpassed 1 million downloads, which amounts to about 5 percent of the population. New Jersey and Pennsylvania have seen less use, with a 4 percent download rate.<\/p>\n

Adoption is even lower in Wyoming, North Dakota, Michigan, Nevada and Alabama, with users representing only 1 percent to 3 percent of their state populations. The apps, which are free, can be found in\u00a0Apple\u2019s app store<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Google Play<\/a>\u00a0store for Android devices; they\u2019re also typically available on state health-department websites.<\/p>\n

Irish app developer NearForm says more than one-quarter of Ireland\u2019s population uses its COVID-19 app. It\u2019s been harder to get such traction in the four US states where it\u2019s built similar apps: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.<\/p>\n

In Ireland, \u201call sides of the political divide came together with a consistent message on this is what we need to do,\u201d said Larry Breen, NearForm\u2019s chief commercial officer. \u201cThat debate continues to rage on your side of the pond.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in Europe, the uptake has been mixed. Germany and Britain have penetration rates similar to Ireland\u2019s; in Finland the figure is 45 percent, according to\u00a0data compiled by MIT Technology Review<\/a>. In France, however, less than 4 percent of the population is using the official COVID app, which shuns the Apple-Google approach for a more intrusive data collection system that raised privacy concerns and technical issues.<\/p>\n

Security experts praise the Apple-Google system for protecting users\u2019 anonymity, but it\u2019s been a tough sell for many people. American users say partisanship, privacy concerns and stigma surrounding COVID-19 have kept participation low. A lack of state and federal efforts to boost awareness hasn\u2019t helped.<\/p>\n

Neither have technological and bureaucratic issues.<\/p>\n

Lee McFarland, a loan officer from Grand Forks, North Dakota, was eager to download his state\u2019s Care19 Alert app but said he couldn\u2019t push a \u201cNotify Others\u201d button after getting the virus in late October.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you test positive, a public health official will call and verify your code,\u201d said a message on McFarland\u2019s app. \u201cThis ensures that only verified positive COVID-19 people can send notifications.\u201d<\/p>\n

McFarland said he forgot to tell the health worker he had the app installed on his phone. He was unsuccessful in following up with the worker to get the needed code and has since deleted the app.<\/p>\n

Even when that process works, however, many North Dakotans don\u2019t actually push the button to notify others.<\/p>\n

Tim Brookins, CEO of app developer ProudCrowd, said 91 of North Dakota\u2019s 14,000 active users had their \u201cNotify Others\u201d button enabled after the state confirmed them as positive. Of the 91 users, only 29 pushed the button, which prompted 50 notifications.<\/p>\n

Still, many users say they\u2019ll keep the app in hopes others will see its potential benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can say that about just about anything that not enough people are doing this or that, but everybody that does something is helping,\u201d said David Waechter, a general contractor from Lenoir, North Carolina. \u201cI think that the United States could use a good strong dose of E pluribus unum and stop thinking about self and start thinking about our countrymen.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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

“#Despite promise, few in US adopting COVID-19 exposure apps” RALEIGH, NC \u2014 Six months ago, Apple and Google\u00a0introduced a new smartphone tool\u00a0designed to notify people who might have been exposed to the coronavirus, without disclosing any personal information. But for the most part, Americans haven\u2019t been all that interested. Fewer than half of US states…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":128138,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/12\/AP_20339686190806-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[82891,5055,1545,4965],"class_list":["post-128137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-7-20","tag-apps","tag-coronavirus","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}