Filenews 26 March 2021
The application has been in operation for a few weeks now the Cypriot positive incident tracking application CovTracer - Exposure Notification.
The application is part of the State for the development of digital and innovative solutions to tackle and intercept the pandemic and has been developed by the CYENS Centres of Excellence (formerly RISE) and The Community, under the supervision of the Ministry of State and in cooperation with the Ministry of Health (YY) and the National Electronic Health Authority. It is part of the European Initiative, which aims to develop and cross-border functionality of tracing applications developed at national level in EU Member States. To this end, the European Federation Gateway Service has already been developed, allowing the connection of national databases and control of the virus transmission chain at pan-European level.
So far the app has about 4,000 active users. However, according to the Deputy Minister for Innovation Research and Research, the target is 200-300 thousand active users in order for the application to become a functional tool in the hands of the contact tracking team.
As Mr. Kokkinos explained to eyenews, statistically in countries where the application is widely used, for every 1% of the population that actively uses it, crown cases are reduced by 0.8% of the population. If, for example, in Cyprus he downloads the application and activates it on his mobile phone, there may be a 40% reduction in positive COVID-19 incidents. He stressed that the use of the application is pre-term and there is full respect for the privacy of the user since neither the Services involved nor the users are aware of the basic parameters of other users.
The Deputy Minister for Innovation and Research urged all citizens to spend 15 seconds downloading and activating the application on their mobile phone, which with the easing of the measures is particularly useful, in order to know if we are considered contacts of a confirmed crown incident.
How it works
The CovTracer-EN application works through the use of the Bluetooth protocol, recording users' contacts as defined as "narrow" in accordance with the Protocol of the Ministry of Health.
Confirmed cases of COVID-19, using the application, have the option to complete in the application the diagnostic code to be given to them by the epidemiological unit of the Ministry of Health and to anonymously inform their possible contacts in order to follow the instructions for testing and self-limit. The application operates purely on a voluntary basis, with full respect for the user's personal data.
The App has three basic functions:
(a) Recording the proximity of devices under the Protocol of the Ministry of Health
The mobile devices on which the Application is installed check proximity according to the Ministry of Health Protocol, which defines close contact and encoded contacts, creating and exchanging anonymous "keys" with nearby devices. The "keys" are essentially anonymous codes, which are stored in a database of the Ministry of Health for a period of 14 days and then deleted.
(b) Update via notifications in case the User of the Application is considered "Possible Close Contact"
App users are notified daily if they have been in contact with a confirmed case in the previous days, via notifications, and will receive instructions. This is done automatically twice a day and manually by the User at any time.
(c) In case of a confirmed Case Update of the "Possible Close Contacts"
Users who are diagnosed positive for COVID-19 will be encouraged to send the "keys" created by the Application in the past few days to the central server of the Ministry of Health, in order to inform the other users who have been in contact accordingly. This process is anonymous and fully respects the privacy of the user.
The app is available in both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.
Source: eyenews
