French tracing app flops with only 14 alerts

France’s much-heralded new phone app for tracking coronavirus cases has only alerted 14 people that they were at risk of infection since its launch three weeks ago, the digital affairs minister said yesterday.

The StopCovid app keeps track of users who have been in close proximity over a twoweek period.

If any become infected, they inform the platform, which alerts the others.

French officials defended the app as a vital tool for slowing the spread of Covid-19, though critics expressed data privacy concerns.

Since its launch, 68 people informed the platform they had been infected and only 14 users were alerted that they were now at risk because of their contacts with these people, digital affairs minister Cedric O said at a media conference.

The minister, nevertheless, defended the usefulness of the app, arguing that the numbers reflected a decrease in the virus’s prevalence.

But he admitted the number of downloads in France paled in comparison with Germany, where 10-million people downloaded the app versus almost two-million in France.

And in France, 460,000 then uninstalled the app, leaving about 1.5-million users across the whole country.

The difference with Germany was not to do with the app itself, Cedric O said.

“It’s probably more to do with our cultural differences and differing attitudes to the coronavirus,” he said.

“And, potentially, it may be linked to a difference in perspective towards respective governments’ behaviour during the pandemic.”

The minister said he had no regrets over the choices made regarding the app, which he said would be very useful if there was a new spike in cases.

Testing apps, touted by some as the best solution to returning life to normal as the virus relents, have had tricky births across Europe.

Britain was due to start unrolling its own app early this month, but those plans were shelved after an initial testing phase revealed major problems.

In a major U-turn, the British government said on Thursday it was ditching its coronavirus-tracing app works and shifting to a model based on technology developed by Apple and Google.