NY offers app for contact tracing
New York State on Thursday unveiled its latest technology in the fight against COVID-19: a contact-tracing app for smartphones called “COVID Alert NY.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the launch of the app during a conference call with reporters. He said the app, available as a free download on Apple and Android (Google) phones, sends a notification to a user if they have been, for at least 10 minutes, within 6 feet of a person who tested positive for COVID.
Similar apps were launched Thursday in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and Connecticut will offer one soon. New York users will be notified if they have been near a COVID-positive person from one of those states.
“We believe it’s the first in the nation, the usage of this,” Cuomo said. “It’s a great tool to alert you. It’s using technology really on a level that’s ... never been used before. It’s not only going to bring contact tracing to a new level, but it’s going to give people comfort.”
The app, available in six languages, use a cellphone’s data and GPS system but does not compromise private information, Cuomo said.
“It will tell you if you were ‘ in
contact’ with a COVID-positive person,” Cuomo said during the conference call. “If a person tests positive, the Department of Health will contact that person and ask if they have a [smartphone]. They give that person a password and that person types in that password. It doesn’t give any names, it doesn’t give any privacy information. It’s voluntary.”
People who are alerted on their phones about having been near a COVID-19
patient will be told to stay at home and call either a physician or the state’s COVID hotline about getting tested.
The app uses technology from both Apple and Google and cost $700,000 to develop. It was paid for with a combination of funding from the federal government and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
The app was tested on the SUNY campuses in Albany, Oswego and Plattsburgh before being rolled out to the public.
Other COVID news
Greene County announced that the County
Office Building at 411 Main St. in Catskill shut down at noon Thursday and won’t reopen until Monday because a county employee tested positive for COVID.
The county said the person was asymptomatic and self-quarantining, and that people who came in contact with the person were being tested and told to quarantine.
The building will be sanitized during the shutdown period, the county said.
By the numbers
Ulster County on Thursday reported three COVID diagnoses among the most recently received 871 test results, a positivity rate of just 0.3%.
The county’s online dashboard of COVID information showed 118 active cases of COVID as of Wednesday, up from 116 on Tuesday.
Since the pandemic began, Ulster County has had 2,291 confirmed cases of the illness, 2,078 recoveries and 95 deaths. The last death was reported Sept. 16.
Dutchess County reported Thursday on its COVID dashboard that, as of Tuesday, it had 144 active cases out of 5,137 that had been diagnosed since the pandemic began.
The dashboard said 4,837 Dutchess residents had recovered from COVID and 156 people had died from it, though the toll apparently did not include the deaths of two people this week at the Hedgewood Home for Adults, an assisted-living facility in Beacon. County Executive Marc Molinaro announced those two deaths Wednesday.