Ever fewer people using the Corona app

The Swiss Covid Tracing app is contributing little to containing the pandemic. Only one in nine people has activated it - trend decreasing.

In the past seven days, around 600 people in Switzerland have tested positive for Corona. Seventy of these recorded this in the Corona app "Swisscovid". That's just over 11%, which is pretty much the same as the proportion of the population that has activated the app.

Expectations were high at the launch of "Swisscovid": Sang-Il Kim, head of App Development at the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), hoped that it would be active on one in five smartphones. After two and a half weeks, we are far from this goal – and are moving even further and further away from it. A week ago, more than one million Swiss had activated the app, but the numbers have been falling since Thursday. On Sunday, the Federal Statistical Office reported 950,288 active apps; that's a drop of nearly 7% in six days. The digital corona tracing of the federal government thereby only reaches just under one in nine people in Switzerland. This is despite the fact that one-fifth of the population has already downloaded the app – it seems that many of them have now uninstalled it, or at least deactivated it.

The Swisscovid app is currently active on fewer smartphones than it was a week ago.

The Federal Office of Public Health is not too worried as yet: "These are understandable fluctuations," it told this newspaper. The figures have been affected by weekends and the start of the holiday period, when people turn off the app once they travel abroad or turn on flight mode over the days off. When looking at the curve, however, doubts arise as to whether this alone can explain the turnaround: there was also a sharp decline from Thursday to Friday, for example. And problems that are not related to days off have also emerged in neighbouring countries.

The pioneer Austria is now lagging behind
Austria was the pioneer in Europe, with the Red Cross launching a tracing app back in March, with a major update at the end of June. By July 6, however, only 775,579 people had installed the app. Even if every downloaded app was activated, this would still result in a much worse rate than in Switzerland.

As of yesterday, there were 15.6 million downloads in Germany, which is roughly equivalent to the quota in Switzerland. It is not known how many of the apps are actually active there.

Things are even worse in France
The French app is a real flop. This was shown in the interim report three weeks after the launch: of the 65 million people in France, less than two million had installed the app – and 460,000 of these had already uninstalled it. With such a short spread, the app can no longer do much to contain the virus. 68 people infected with Covid recorded their positive test results in the app. This resulted in just 14 warnings to other people who had been exposed to an increased risk of infection, according to their smartphone.

What's wrong? Concerns about data protection may have deterred a section of the population in France. The collected data is stored centrally there, in contrast to Switzerland. But here too, people are worried about revealing too much about themselves. The authorities had promised that no personal data or locations would be collected. But Android users were prompted to turn on the location feature once they installed the app. The government can't change that: Android devices need to have it enabled in order for the required Bluetooth function to run. This is irritating – the Android app is rated 3.7 out of 5 stars by users, while Apple's is rated as 4.6 stars.

Two-thirds of the population wanted the app in April,
Another reason for the decline may be that the number of infections is now much lower than in the spring, making the population less afraid. In April, 65% of Swiss people were ready to install the app, according to the Sotomo research centre. By May, however, this had reduced to 60% percent, and to 54% in June. By the end of June, the Comparis online comparison service found that only 44% supported the app.

In addition, the obligation to wear masks in public transport has increased the risk of false alarms. If someone wearing a mask on the train is sitting next to an infected person, this is not considered a risk of infection. The app knows nothing about the mask, however, and considers the situation risky. If someone disables the app on the train for this reason, it may also happen that he or she forgets to turn it on again afterwards.

Anyone who uses an old iPhone is excluded
Some Swiss were even excluded from the very start for technical reasons. It is true that well over 90% own a smartphone here. But if you're still using the iPhone 6 from 2014, you'll find that the app doesn’t working. It requires a newer version of the operating system, which only runs from the iPhone 6s. And this won’t change any time soon – the Swiss app is dependent on Apple, and the company no longer supports the older model. The problem is exactly the other way around with Huawei. Due to sanctions imposed by the USA, the Chinese manufacturer is no longer allowed to use the "Play Store" function. This means that it can’t access to the Swiss tracing app.

What use is the app if it’s only used by so few people? In the run-up, it was often said that 60% utilisation had to be achieved for a tracing app to effectively contain the virus. This figure originated from a study by Oxford University. But the research team behind the study complained afterwards that the numbers they had given had been reduced. Even with low usage figures, an app helps to slow the pandemic, however. In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, co-author Lucie Abeler-Dörner said that the app started working as soon as 15% of the population participated.

Even this figure is far more than the current 11% in Switzerland. "Any interruption of the infection chain is important," says the FOPH. In order to increase the share, the federal government is now working with the mobile network operators, as it announced yesterday. Salt, Sunrise and Swisscom will recommend to their customers that they should install the app via SMS.