Covid tracer app still a work in progress
tom.pullar-strecker@ stuff.co.nz
For a service designed to make navigating the post-covid world simpler, the government’s coronavirus ‘‘tracing’’ app appears to be causing a fair amount of confusion.
In its first release, the NZ Covid Tracer app does little more than provide the Health Ministry with people’s up-to-date contact information.
As a bonus, it can also serve as a basic ‘‘aide-memoire’’ to help people record their visits to the likes of food outlets and shops during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The idea is that people scan a QR code when they visit a venue, and the app creates a log of the places they have visited, and when, on their smartphone.
The Health Ministry’s explanations of how the app could later evolve into a ‘‘true’’ tracing tool have been somewhat ambiguous. But it is clear from privacy documentation that a later release of the app could allow people to automatically share details of their visits with the Health Ministry, if they choose to.
That may mean the ministry will then be able to use the app to automatically alert people who had visited a business at the same time as someone subsequently diagnosed with Covid-19. But it can’t do that yet.
So far 405,000 people have downloaded the initial version of the app.
The Health Ministry hopes about 62,000 ‘‘high traffic’’ businesses will display the QR codes that people need to scan to log their visits on their phone.
But up to now, only 15,500 of the QR posters have been printed out, and the ministry acknowledges that the number of businesses actually displaying the codes may be fewer than that.
Confusion has arisen because
many cafes and bars are displaying separate QR codes that can be used with commercially developed apps. Those apps are used to meet their legal requirement to maintain their own register of visitors during alert level 2, as an alternative to keeping a register using pen and paper.
But the QR codes generated by those apps are – or were until very recently – different from the ones that businesses needed to display for the government app. That means businesses that want to support the government app but which also want to use QR codes to maintain their own register, may need to display two separate QR codes – one to do each job. That appears to have been a recipe for chaos.
‘‘The ministry is aware that some people are having difficulty scanning QR codes with the NZ Covid-19 Tracer mobile app. This is because the app is designed to work with the official QR codes only,’’ ministry spokeswoman Aimee Gulliver explained. ‘‘The app will not work with other QR codes.’’
The Health Ministry released details of a data standard for software developers on Friday that should allow businesses to display a single QR code to fulfil both functions. Wellington company Paperkite reported yesterday that it had integrated the QR codes in its commercial tracing app, Rippl, which it sells to businesses for $49 per venue for a three-month subscription, ending the problem for its customers.
So far 405,000 people have downloaded the initial version of the app.