The European Union has turned on cross-border interoperability for a first batch of COVID-19 contact-tracking apps that use Bluetooth proximity to calculate the exposure risk of smartphone users after a pilot of the system last month.
The domestic apps whose backends are now connected via the gateway service are the German Corona-Warn-App, the Republic of Ireland COVID tracker and the Italian immune app.
This means that a user of one of those apps who travels to any of the other countries can expect their domestic app to send relevant exposure notifications the same way it would if they hadn't traveled, without the need to download any software. additional.
Overall, the three national COVID-19 apps were downloaded by around 30 million people which, according to the EU, account for two-thirds of such downloads in the region.
Other national apps are expected to gain interoperability as they are added to the service in the coming weeks, with at least 18 other compatible national apps identified at this stage.
A second batch of national apps is expected to be added next week after a test period, namely: eRouška from the Czech Republic, smitte stop from Denmark, Apturi COVID from Latvia and Radar Covid from Spain (although the latter does not yet have a full coverage in Spain with the Region of Catalonia still to be integrated with its regional health system). More compatible apps are expected to be added in November.
The gateway was designed to work, first and foremost, with official coronavirus apps that have a decentralized architecture, which means that all those that use a centralized architecture, such as the French StopCovid app, are currently not compatible.
The UK app collection, meanwhile, for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, is unlikely to be linked, despite having a technically compatible app architecture, as the country will come out of the trading block at the end of this. year. (So interoperability would require a separate agreement between the UK and the EU.)
"About two thirds of EU Member States have developed compatible tracking and alerting apps and the gateway is open to all of them once they are ready to connect. The connection will take place gradually in October and November, however apps can also connect at a later stage if national authorities so wish. An "onboarding protocol" has been developed which defines the necessary steps, "notes the Commission in a question and answer session.
The cross-border system for EU apps works through the use of a gateway server, developed and set up by T-Systems and SAP and operated by the Commission's data center in Luxembourg, which receives and transmits arbitrary identifiers between national apps.
"No other information other than arbitrary keys, generated by apps, will be handled by the gateway," notes the EU in a press release. "Information is pseudonymized, encrypted, kept to a minimum and stored only for as long as it takes to trace infections. It does not allow the identification of individuals, nor the monitoring of the position or movement of devices. "
Getting a cross-border system up and running so quickly through a patchwork of national COVID-19 apps is an achievement for the EU, although there are ongoing questions about the usefulness of Bluetooth-based coronavirus exposure notifications in the fight against the spread. of the novel coronavirus - with much of Europe experiencing a second wave of pandemic.
However, EU commissioners suggested today that such apps can be a useful complement to other measures, such as manual contact tracing.
Commenting in a statement, StellaKyriakides, EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, said: "Coronavirus tracking and alert apps can effectively complement other measures such as increased testing and manual contact tracing. With cases on the rise, they can play an important role in helping us break the chains of transmission. When working across borders, these apps are even more powerful tools. Our active gateway system today is an important step in our work and I urge citizens to use these apps to protect each other. "
"Free movement is an integral part of the single market: the gateway facilitates this by helping to save lives," added Thierry Breton, Commissioner for the Internal Market.
