• Covid.The pilot plan for the Spanish contagion tracking app
  • Pilot: this will be the simulation of an outbreak in La Gomera
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RadarCovid's voluntary contagion alert app "practically doubles" the close-contact locating capabilities of manual trackers. This was stated by Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence during the presentation of the pilot study of the tool that has been carried out in La Gomera in recent weeks.

Artigas stressed that the results of the evaluation have been "highly satisfactory" since all the objectives set have been "exceeded". As for effectiveness, the app manages to detect an average of 6.4 close contacts at risk , while in manual tracking, this figure is reduced to 3.5 people on the island, Artigas said.

Regarding the adoption of the tool, the goal of 3,000 downloads on the island has also been exceeded - some 3,200 people have incorporated it into their mobile phone - and 83% kept it active after downloading. Across the country, some 60,000 people have also already downloaded the app, Artigas said.

During a telematic press conference, Artigas has advanced that the intention of the Executive is to make it available nationwide as of September 15, although it is expected that "two or three Autonomous Communities" may adopt the technology by "procedure of urgency "from August 10. According to his words, the Balearic and Canary Islands have already expressed their desire to be among the regions that launch the initiative earlier due to their tourist interests.

Artigas affirmed that there is great interest on the part of all the autonomous governments, which must implement an action protocol to be able to count on the application. Thus, each autonomy must establish an internal circuit to ensure how contact is made with possible cases and what is the procedure that they must follow.

"It is a useful complement. We are convinced that it can help in the context of reappearance of outbreaks of contagion. The app sees more than us, because we only remember known contacts and the app also unknown. It is faster and has more memory , records more contacts than us. It is anonymous and much less intrusive than receiving someone's call to reconstruct what you have done in the last 15 days. Our assessment is more than positive. It has demonstrated reliability and precision to record close contacts, "said the secretary. of State.

The pilot study was launched on June 29 and has lasted until July 31. In that time, four waves of fictitious outbreaks have been simulated.

The application uses the Bluetooth connection of the mobile, which issues and collects anonymous identifiers, they explain from the Secretary of State. When two terminals are less than two meters away for at least 15 minutes, they both store the identifier issued by the other, so that, if one of the owners is infected, they can notify, anonymously, any user of the app that has had a risky contact so that it contacts your doctor.

"By not requesting data of any kind, it is impossible to identify any user," they emphasize.

In La Gomera, 61% of the users of the 'app' reported their simulated positive, although Artigas considers that in a real scenario this percentage could be higher since, he explained, many of the participants in the pilot study stated that As it was a test, they believed that it was not necessary to report. 78% reported it in less than 24 hours .

The technical advisor of the project, Pablo Rodríguez, has detailed that there is no minimum percentage of the population that the application must have installed for it to be effective, but he pointed out that "above 2% it could help reduce the impact of the pandemic in 30% . " "Scientific studies say that such an app provides benefits even from low levels of adoption," he said. The general evaluation of the tool, according to the surveys carried out, is 8.2 out of 10.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, stressed this Friday, during the Conference of Presidents, that the pilot of the app has ended "with very satisfactory results". From a technical point of view, he noted that "its reliability and precision in detecting close-risk contacts have been demonstrated," in addition to "no false positives having been generated," reports Europa Press. According to Sánchez, he has "doubled the data on the manual trackers." "I call upon you, presidents and presidents, to request it," added the chief executive.

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