Ontario to track virus using smartphone app

ROB FERGUSON

Ontario is launching a contact tracing app for smartphones in preparation for a second wave of COVID-19 amid warnings that it’s not a silver bullet.

Slated for release in early July, COVID Alert is a national prototype that will be tested first in Ontario, where it was developed by the province, Canadian Digital Services, Shopify and BlackBerry.

The app allows people who get a positive test result for the virus to automatically and anonymously notify anyone who has come within two metres of them long enough to potentially become infected.

This is done by typing a randomly generated eight-digit code that comes with an individual’s test result into the app, triggering messages to contacts that they should contact their local public health departments.

The idea is to speed up notifications that otherwise would come from public health workers tracing contacts of positive cases, who often struggle or take days to remember with whom they’ve had close associations for at least 10 or 15 minutes.

Downloading and using the app will be voluntary, but “if we don’t have the co-operation of the people of Ontario, we put ourselves at risk,” Premier Doug Ford said Thursday, giving a shout-out to Shopify and Black

Berry for providing staff time free of charge for the development effort.

Ford promised a major marketing campaign to promote COVID Alert as Canada surpassed 100,000 cases, almost 35,000 of them and just over 2,600 deaths in this province alone.

Chief medical officer Dr. David Williams said Ontario is looking closely at the experience in Alberta. When that province launched its own app earlier this spring, just 11 per cent of the population downloaded it.

The app alerts will not tell users the time or date they may have come into contact with someone who is positive for COVID-19, just that a contact took place sometime in the previous two weeks.

This is for privacy reasons so people can’t identify who might have exposed them, or be mistaken about who the exposure came from, said Hayley Chazan, senior manager of media relations for Health Minister Christine Elliott.

Ford and Ontario health officials insisted privacy protections are in place because the app uses Bluetooth signals rather than GPS, destroys collected data after 14 days and does not use personal information.

The app will augment efforts by staff at Ontario’s 34 local public health units, who are doing contact tracing and case management and were swamped at the peak of the pandemic first wave, officials added.

Testing the app throughout the summer will allow time to work out any bugs before a second wave of COVID-19 that’s widely expected in the fall.

Ontario’s Ministry of Health reported Thursday that the number of new cases in the province was below 200 for the fifth day in a row and the number of patients in hospital with COVID-19 was below 400 for the second straight day.

The number of active cases of the virus fell to 2,360 in Ontario.