MPs in the north of England are being told that pubs and bars are driving outbreaks. Mass closures are expected in parts of the country. Isn't this the the venue check-in system on the app is for?
More on this. The contact tracing app has two main systems
📳 Bluetooth proximity detection
📳 QR check-ins to venues
Ministers were so committed to QR check-ins they made it ILLEGAL for pubs, bars and restaurants in England* not to display an official QR poster
*not Wales
The idea behind the QR code system is simple. If you check into a venue, then when there's an outbreak there, you can be warned about it
So why has only one alert been sent?
Health officials say the system is young and wasn't expected to be used frequently. They point to a similar app in New Zealand which has apparently been very successful
Here's what DHSC said when I asked them about the alerts
These are very reasonable points. We can add that the system is young and that the main contact tracing element appears to be working normally
But with mass closures of pubs and restaurants expected, you have to ask - if it doesn't send alerts, what is the QR system for?
{Here comes the science bit}
How do we know the app has only sent one alert? (1/3)
To send an alert, public health officials add the code for that venue to a data file, which is automatically sent to every contact tracing app several times a day
The app then checks to see if the codes on the file match any of the places where the user has checked in - this is all done locally on the phone to avoid sending a list of locations to a central server (2/3)
The source code for the app is available to inspect. And, if you're smarter than me, you can look through it and find the data file with the venue alerts on it
There were other secrets buried in the code. For instance: the text that'll get sent if there is a venue alert
Here's the first part (it's long). Note that it doesn't tell you which venue you were in. That not a bug, it's a feature - privacy protections mean it's not allowed
Rather than giving specific advice, the alert tells people to watch out for symptoms, a strategy DHSC officials describe as "warn and inform"
There is functionality for different alerts but as far as I can tell it hasn't been enabled
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I want to tell you a hopeful story. A story about the things that can be done here and now to mitigate this terrible illness
Eighteen months ago, I caught a cough. It was a little annoying, so I took a day off work, thinking that would be the end of it
The next morning, I woke up and everything was different
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Don’t like putting personal things on Twitter, but I’ve just logged on after a while and found a load of DMs asking why I’ve disappeared, which is… a good question
If you haven’t seen me recently it’s because I’ve got a nasty case of long covid. Eight months and counting :(
My main symptoms are fatigue and brain fog. Medically I’m in perfect health – none of the tests show anything – but I have *much* less energy. If I push myself too hard then I just collapse. It’s like someone has reached inside and turned me off. It's scary
My health has improved since this all began in March. I don’t have to go to bed for days after checking my emails. But I still get tired very easily, even after relatively moderate activity – and I have a two-year-old, so keeping things moderate isn't straightforward
On the rare occasions their data was used for contact tracing, businesses were encouraged to call customers themselves, a breach of data protection law
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When the Open Government Partnership was set up in 2011, the UK really was the world leader in open government
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