for about a month now, i’ve had the government’s official covid alert app installed on my phone. it is active and monitoring. each week i get a notification telling me i haven’t had contact with anybody who tested positive for the coronavirus.
both of those steps lower the chances of the app doing its job. in its first month, there were only 2.2 million downloads and 90 infections. as we confront a second wave of covid-19 infections, how do we change that?
i work with many entrepreneurs through the creative destruction lab at the university of toronto and we know that getting people to download an app can be challenging. they have to know about it. they have to remember to download it. and they have to remember to set it up.
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ironically, to encourage people to download the covid alert app, we want to use viral processes as we’re attempting to contain an actual virus. and, yes, that’s a challenge because many of these app downloads are driven by people sharing thoughts when they are together — and most of us are living in relative isolation at the moment.
to get the covid alert app installed, therefore, we need a push. apple and google are taking small steps in this direction. they will both have updates to smartphone operating systems that will allow people to be alerted to exposures without having an app installed. but they will still need an official app if they want to report a covid-19 infection.
the fact that private companies are working on this is good news. the covid alert app was built off an open-source base provided by shopify that anticipated the need well ahead of the government. now we need those very same companies to step in to get the app to go viral.
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one possibility might be to anticipate a situation where things might go the other way, as some have suggested for convalescent plasma donations . in that case, to encourage people who had already had covid-19 to donate their blood for use to help others fight the virus, economists suggested that they be given a voucher for their own family or friends to move to the front of the line for a treatment.
if we can push app downloads to a majority of the population, that will make a difference. nonetheless, we’ll also need to worry about entering covid-19 infections into the app as well. in south korea , where they’ve done so well containing the virus, these infections are automatically entered when someone tests positive.
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before snapping those back-to-school photos and posting them to facebook, parents should first ensure their children have the app installed. as we head into a second wave, the rest of us should install it immediately too.