California releases smartphone virus tool
SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced a voluntary smartphone tool to alert people of possible coronavirus exposure as cases soar higher, new restrictions are imposed and many people still say they won’t heed the pleas to stay home.
The tool — which has been used on a pilot basis on some state university campuses — doesn’t track people’s identities or locations but uses Bluetooth wireless signals to detect when two phones are within 6 feet (1.8 meters) of each other for at least 15 minutes, officials said.
California’s 40 million residents can opt in to the system starting Thursday. When someone who has activated the technology tests positive for the virus, that person will receive a verification code from state health officials that can be used to send an anonymous alert to other users who may have been exposed over the past 14 days.
“The more people that participate in it, the more that opt in, the more effective this program can be,” Newsom told reporters. “We are hoping there will be enough to make this meaningful.”
The technology comes as coronavirus cases are exploding in California and more than 80 percent of the state’s residents are under orders not to leave their homes for at least the next three weeks except for essential purposes. Sixteen other states, plus Guam and Washington, D.C., have already made available the system co-created by Apple and Google, though most residents of those places aren’t using it.
Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at University of California, Irvine, questioned how many residents would opt in due to privacy concerns and the value of the tool if they don’t.
He said people may find themselves paralyzed by a flood of information and it isn’t clear what they’ll do with it — especially if they take a coronavirus test after
getting an alert and wind up negative, only to receive another alert.
“In a purely epidemiological perspective, uptake is everything. If about 10 percent of people do it, it’s useless,” he said. “Even if it does get takers, it’s still unproven. Because then, what do you do?”
Over the past two weeks, California has reported a quarter
of a million positive virus cases. The seven-day average for newly reported virus cases on Monday neared 22,000, a 50 percent increase over the prior week, state data shows.
More than 10,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, including more than 2,300 in intensive care, Newsom said.
The state’s 400 hospitals are at about 80 percent capacity but there are hospitals in San Diego, Imperial, and Los Angeles counties with intensive care units that are full, said Carmela Coyle, president of the California Hospital Association. Hospitals are limited by staff shortages following a spike in virus cases around Halloween, she said.
“These numbers do not yet include the Thanksgiving holiday, and the gathering of families just a week or so ago so. We do expect that this will get far worse before it gets better,” she said.
The numbers leave California back where it started 10 months ago with stay-at-home rules, but now fewer people are likely to obey them.
Newsom’s administration issued the stay-at-home rules closing restaurant dining, salons and playgrounds in Southern California and a large swath of the Central Valley agricultural region after more than 85 percent of intensive care units were occupied in those regions.