Governments throughout the globe, working alongside tech companies, have been starting to promote the use of contact tracing apps to combat coronavirus.
The project, made by tech giants Google and Apple, is a solution to closely track and monitor people who have infected with COVID-19. By using bluetooth, the device of the infected person will send alerts to the surrounding devices. Upon receiving the notification, the developers hope that people will maintain social distance and self-quarantine.
The contact tracing apps are initially fruitful to mitigate the transmission of the pandemic. However, it will miserably fail if the developers could not convince people to use it. The challenge is demanding as people have huge skepticism over tech industries.
To begin with, the skepticism gradually grows as cases of tech industries abusing their customers’ data are widely present. The same goes with the apps as potential failure lurks despite all the benefits.
To understand better about the situation, here are the good and the bad of the contact tracing apps.
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The Good
Though Google and Apple did not give specific numbers on the necessary users to effectively stop the virus transmission, but various institutions estimate that the figure must be approximately 60% of the global device users.
In other words, if governments and companies succeed in persuading people to use the apps, there will be a huge possibility that we can flatten the curve quicker than expected. Not to mention that the apps will simplify the manual labors that medical workers have to do over the decades.
Also, the apps will be able to project more accurate data pertaining to virus distribution. This is considering that statistical data about the number of unreported cases in various countries.
The Bad
The bad, of course, is regarding security concerns. People are highly skeptical over the data abuse by tech industries. This skepticism, furthermore, can lead to a mass failure.
Accordingly, tech companies have promised that they will not abuse the data and delete the data immediately after 14 days if the users do not suffer from COVID-19. They also promise to shut down the technology after the pandemic is no more.
However, Singapore, a country that has implemented the technology, notes that it will not be able to replace the manual one. Besides, Google and Apple also states that there needs to be an available COVID-19 testing to make it work.
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