Paris (AFP)

The Americans Apple and Google have made available to health authorities around the world their solution to build a contact tracking application against the coronavirus, they announced on Wednesday.

"From today, our (...) technology is available for public health agencies" on iOS (Apple) and Android (Google), the two dominant smartphone operating systems in the world, have said Google and Apple in a joint statement.

"What we have built is not an application, but rather a programming interface (API) that health agencies can integrate into their own applications," said the two giants.

The ball is therefore now in the court of national developers to build an application for smartphones from this platform.

In Europe, the vast majority of States are moving towards an application based on the tool provided by Apple and Google, but France and the United Kingdom in particular have chosen a different approach, France explaining that it wanted keep full control of its tracing solution.

The British and French applications are being tested.

The French Parliament is due to vote on the StopCovid application next week. The objective is a commissioning on June 2.

- Shy adoption -

According to Google and Apple, 22 countries on 5 continents have requested access to their programming interface, and they expect further requests in the coming weeks.

In the United States, three states have announced their intention to adopt this technology.

North Dakota launched in late April "Care19" a tracking application in partnership with a private developer, which was to incorporate the proposal from Google and Apple as soon as it was available.

But the first versions were very criticized by users, who found that it could not properly determine their location.

Nearly 3 in 5 Americans will want or be unable to use an application based on the interface of the two California companies, according to a survey by the University of Maryland for the Washington Post in April.

The reluctance is linked to the perception of the dangerousness of the virus - those who do not feel concerned do not see the interest of such an app - but also to the possession of a smartphone.

Half of the people over 65 do not have one, the study said.

Next are concerns about the collection of personal data.

- Conditions -

Worried about seeing their solution taken for a mass surveillance tool, Google and Apple have laid down several conditions that states will have to respect.

Thus the application should only be available on a voluntary basis, and should not collect geolocation data, or give rise to commercial exploitation.

Only one health agency per region or per State may use it, so that there is no "competition" of applications on the same territory.

And it will be up to each user to decide whether or not to declare their contamination to warn the people they have encountered.

Apple and Google also promise to uninstall their solution "by region" when it is no longer needed to fight the coronavirus.

On the other hand, each health authority or State will remain free to make a certain number of choices on the configuration of the application.

So they can decide, for example, from what distance and duration of contact, they assess a risk of contamination when two people meet.

The contact tracking apps allow a user who discovers that he is contaminated to automatically notify everyone he has encountered in the past few days.

They use Bluetooth, the system that allows smartphones and other electronic devices to communicate at close range.

Smartphones keep the memory of other smartphones they have encountered, using a system of pseudonyms to preserve the anonymity of people.

© 2020 AFP