Corona contact tracing apps can reduce the spread of the infection, even if only a few use them, the latest study shows.
Already 15 percent of the population that would use the app to prevent infection with coronavirus, could drastically reduce the spread of infection. At the same time, the mass use of the application could prevent the "closure" of normal life. This is also why it is important that we all behave responsibly.
V Slovenia we use the app #ostanizdrav, which is available for Android and iOS.
Accommodation is extremely simple and contributes to general social responsibility, which you can clearly express as an individual. Therefore, if you wear a mask and observe other measures to limit the spread of the virus, we see no reason not to help our epidemiologists detect potential contacts and thus enable successful limiting of the spread of the virus also by installing the application. If you have the application installed, you will enter your test result yourself upon infection, and the application will inform users anonymously, that they were in contact with you. It will not reveal yours identity or meeting locations. This principle is extreme harmless and useful to the users of the application, but at the same time it can be powerful reduces the spread of infection.
In this way, the application enables preventive behavior and conservation normal operation of the company. No closings and no unnecessary quarantines.
More and more countries around the world have their own contact tracing app, infected with the coronavirus. But the problem is that these apps don't (yet) communicate with each other, so users have no way of knowing whether the strangers they've been in contact with might have been infected or not. Even when it comes to foreign citizens, for example. The other problem is, yes users they are not overly inclined to install such an application. On the one hand, because they are afraid that such an application will follow them and record their movements, and on the other hand, because they may not have devices that support it, or they may not have sufficient knowledge to use it.
Until now, it was considered that as many people as possible should install such applications, to make it easier to trace infected contacts and for people to find out as soon as possible if they have been in contact with someone who later tested positive for the virus. However, the study they conducted University of Oxford and Google, showed that apps are effective even when a relatively small number of people use them.
They found that even in the case of when only 15 percent of the population uses the app, together with a good team of epidemiologists who can monitor the contacts of the infected, this also means up to 15 percent fewer infected and 11 percent fewer deaths due to the disease COVID-19.
Even if we consider only 15 percent of app users, the researchers calculated that this would cause 8 percent less infected and 6 percent fewer deaths as in the case that we do not use the application.
However, the researchers point out, that their results were based on statistical data, which do not always reflect the situation "on the ground", and did not take into account the movement of people across the border, which contributes to the spread of the disease even across borders. The way it was known in our country during the summer holidays.
We send a lot more data this way every day to Google like Facebook, but we never wonder what these two giants are actually doing with this data. This is also why "opposition" to such solutions is in the good of society socially irresponsible.
It is worth reducing number of infected! Even if only by one percent and even if we only save one life, right?
