Covid app should be mandatory for visitors to Ireland
WE SHOULD make it mandatory for visitors to Ireland from other countries to download the Covid-19 tracker app, according to health experts.
Chief medical officer Tony Holohan has warned that overseas travel remains the biggest threat to public health and will increase our risk of a second Covid-19 wave.
At the moment, 2.4% of cases are related to travel, community transmission is at 32.8% and 64.8% of cases are due to close contact with a confirmed case.
Currently, if you arrive in Ireland from any other country you need to fill in the Covid-19 Passenger Locator
‘Tourists should be given a phone if necessary’
Form and restrict your movements for 14 days.
However, Dr Tomas Ryan, associate professor of biochemistry in Trinity College Dublin, and Professor Gerry Killeen, AXA research chair in applied pathogen ecology at UCC, believe we should make downloading the Covid-tracker app mandatory for those wanting to enter the country along with the two-week self-isolation measure.
Mr Ryan also said that in cases where someone may not have a device for the app, one should be provided for them at their expense while they visit.
Asked if he thought the app should be mandatory for visitors to Ireland, Dr Ryan said: ‘100%, yes absolutely. And I think they should be given a phone or a device (at their expense) if necessary.’
Prof. Killeen added: ‘Seems like a good idea to me, so long as it’s not a substitute for isolation if coming from a country or hub airport with ongoing transmission.’
However, enforcing tourists and visitors to download the app may not be a viable option as the use of contact tracing apps should be voluntary, according to the European Data Protection Board.
Professor Rob Kitchin of the Maynooth Social Sciences Institute told the MoS: ‘If Ireland wants it to be mandatory we will be running against their guidance and also what the Government has been consistently saying here about its voluntary nature. At present, the guidance is to self-isolate for two weeks and the use of an app doesn’t overrule that advice.
‘Unless the domestic population have the app installed too, then the visitor’s advice will have limited effect as there’ll be few phones to connect with.’
Professor Stephen Farrell, computer science research fellow at Trinity College Dublin, who has carried out research on the app with his colleague Professor Doug Leith, said we shouldn’t make it mandatory, particularly when the effectiveness of tracker apps are in doubt. ‘One of the dangers of these apps is that they may be forced onto people when there is, as yet, no real evidence that they are at all effective,’ he added.
‘In the testing I’ve done with my colleague Doug Leith we found that Bluetooth cannot always reliably determine if someone is closer than 2m or further than 2m away.
‘For example, in tests on a Luas tram it was more or less random as to whether someone 1m away or someone almost 5m away would be counted as being within 2m or not.
‘In other words, the basic function of the app might not work well, in which case the number of downloads is not really a positive. [And could be a negative, if one million people decide later running this wasn’t a great plan.] There is also the problem that if you want to enable this app on Android but do not want other apps to be able to track your location then you have to disable access to location for each of those other apps one by one.
‘That’s not the HSE’s fault and the HSE are not trying to access people’s lat/long co-ordinates, but it is a side-effect of how Google implements Bluetooth and location services. That means anyone who wants to help the HSE but not be a target for advertising has to do unexpected and non-obvious work that the HSE have not highlighted in their materials.’
The Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment from MoS.
‘No real evidence that apps are at all effective’