https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40037825.htmlCovid tracker app deleted 500,000 timesWEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 2020 - 06:15 AM
CIANAN BRENNAN
The HSE’s Covid-19 Tracker app has been deleted over 500,000 times since its launch, leading to questions as to how effective it can be.
The HSE has confirmed that the device is believed to be running on 1.17m devices in Ireland at present.
However, the total number of registrations according to the app itself at the time of publication was 1.734m, a difference of 564,000, or more than a third of the number of people who are supposed to be using it.
Further, the HSE is unable to confirm how many people who have the app on their phones are using it correctly, that is, with bluetooth and GPS (in the case of Android) enabled.
The Covid-19 Tracker App was first launched on July 7 after three months of development and had racked up over 1m downloads within 24 hours of its launch.
Its existence in the seven weeks following its launch was perhaps most noteworthy for a glitch on its Android version in early August, which saw the battery of phones rapidly depleted leading to a rash of uninstalls.
Meanwhile, the app has been deleted by at least 147,000 Apple users — however, the figure may be a great deal larger, with just 27% of those users consenting to sharing their metrics with the HSE.
The HSE said that 552,000 iPhones and 618,000 Android devices currently sport the app.
Separately, the HSE said that of 648 close contact alerts issued to app users since launch, just 349 of those, or 53%, have consented to being contacted by contact tracers.
Regarding a measure of how effective the app can be with a diminished user-set, Dr Stephen Farrell of the Trinity College Dublin school of computer science said that “the more people running it the better a chance the app has”.
“You need both people running it in a situation for it to work,” Dr Farrell said. He also said that a better measure of the app’s effectiveness would be whether it is detecting people who would otherwise be missed.
Meanwhile, a new study by the Economic and Social Research Institute (Esri) has found that widespread misconceptions about contact tracing exist among the Irish public, including almost half of people not realising that the system is free to use.
Last night, the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET) revealed that a further 92 people have tested positive for Covid-19 in Ireland, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 28,201. No new deaths were reported.
The Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly and chief executive of the HSE Paul Reid will today appear before the Oireachtas special committee on the coronavirus to discuss the recent spike in cases.
