The German Corona Tracing App Is Here
This is what it does and how it looks like.
It took a while but it is finally here. The German version of the corona tracing app is now available to download. Here is what it does and how it looks like.
The app has been published by the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which is an official health institute of the German government. The app has been developed by german tech giants like Deutsche Telekom and SAP.
The most important feature of any government issued corona app is the tracing of infection chains.
This so called exposure logging uses Bluetooth to identify if a healthy person has been in contact with a Covid-19 patient for a certain time period (Germany opted for 15 Minutes as the critical exposure time).
Officials and the developers of the “Corona-Warn App”, the official name for the app, say that data privacy is absolutely guaranteed. Apple and Google have released versions of their operating systems iOS and Android that have the Bluetooth tracing functionality enabled. Apps like the German tracing app use this functionality via API and thus do not rely on own, custom-made tracing technology.
Random IDs are shared via Bluetooth with the people around you who are also using the app. If one of the IDs your phone received becomes a positive Covid-19 case within 14 days after exposure you should get a notification warning you about this. This should be the trigger to go into self-isolation and stay at home for a while.
Testing positive on Covid-19 will not automatically result in warning those app users the patient had contact with though.
The health officials have no access to the individual apps (since there is no “User account” as such that makes sense). Instead the government hopes that people are responsible and indicate the positive test on their own using the app. That would than trigger the warning to other users.
The “Corona-Warn App” by the German government is available for iOS devices here and Android devices here.
If you live in Germany: Please download the app and activate exposure tracing. We are all in this together. Only if enough people use the app the system will work.
