Health Canada announced Friday that the COVID Alert app has been shut down, citing low usage, declining number of cases and hospitalizations, as well as the lack of PCR testing across Canada.
As of June 17, the app will no longer provide exposure notifications, and Health Canada says users can now delete the app.
The app had only been downloaded 6.9 million times and had 63,117 positive tests since its launch in July 2020. British Columbia, Alberta, Nunavut and the Yukon also declined to participate in the app.
Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease expert, says the app is “a good idea at the time,” but says that after six to eight months, low usage meant that the app “wouldn’t really be a tool.” effective “.
“It’s going to be hard to really measure the actual impact of the app, and unfortunately it probably wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be,” Bogoch told CTV’s Your Morning on Friday. “The app only downloaded a little less than seven million devices, which is not enough for something like this to be effective. You really need 60 to 70 percent of the population to have an app like this. “.
The app worked by tracking other users who have been near you using Bluetooth signals. Users who tested positive for PCR may receive a unique key to enter the application and alert other users who have been in close contact with a positive case.
This process was sometimes disarticulated. If a user was in a jurisdiction that did not automatically issue a key, they had to contact their local public health unit to obtain one.
But because most provinces now restrict eligibility for PCR testing to health care workers, hospital patients, long-term care residents, and others who are considered to be at higher risk, most users who contract COVID -19 could not get a single blow. key, as the keys are not given after a quick test, which further impairs the effectiveness of the application
In December, Newfoundland and Labrador Health Minister John Haggie told reporters that the federal government had “given up” the application months ago, although Haggie later withdrew his comments and Health Canada reiterated its commitment. of the federal government with the application at that time. .
In March, Manitoba also stopped using the app and no longer distributes unique keys. Alberta has its own contact tracking app known as ABTraceTogether, but the province has announced that this app will be disabled on June 23rd.
To address privacy issues, the federal government said the app has no way of knowing the location, name, address, phone contacts and personal information of other users of the app who were close to the user.
When the application was first launched, the Federal and Ontario Privacy Commissioners reviewed the application and gave their support, saying it had been “developed with strong safeguards to protect the identity of users “.
Bogoch believes some of the steps designed to protect Canadians’ privacy, such as making the application voluntary, may have hindered its success. In Singapore, the adoption rate of the country’s COVID contact tracking application is 92%, as the use of the application became mandatory to enter many public spaces.
“This app involves people having to download it and then have to report that they actually had COVID,” he said. “It’s probably not the best way to run it. I’m not even sure if an application-based approach in a place like Canada would be a good idea for an effective way to keep track of contacts by just moving forward. for how we value our privacy. “
But despite the low adoption of the app, Canada’s director of public health, Dr. Theresa Tam, said it was important for innovations like this to take place during a public health challenge.
“Not all innovations can work in different populations, but I think it’s good that there has been a good attempt to use another tool in the current age of applications to try to protect the population,” he told reporters during a COVID-19. 19 press conference Friday afternoon.
Health Canada says all data in the app will be deleted, except for aggregate performance metrics that do not contain personally identifiable information.
Filed by Sarah Turnbull of CTVNews.ca and The Caandian Press.