The French contact tracing application against the StopCovid coronavirus "has passed the milestone of a million users", said on Saturday June 6, the Secretary of State for Digital, Cédric O, on RMC.

The latter clarified to AFP that the figure of one million corresponded to "activations" of the application, and not to simple downloads. The bar was crossed "at 7:30 this morning," said the same source.

StopCovid allows its users to be warned if they have encountered another user contaminated with coronavirus in the previous two weeks. The alert is then triggered if the smartphones of the two people have crossed within a meter, for more than 15 minutes.

In 4 days, the #StopCovid application was activated 1 million times. Protect yourself, protect others ➡️ https://t.co/pbh45fQaoi@olivierveran @gouvernementFR pic.twitter.com/EjitKswhPi

- Cédric O (@cedric_o) June 6, 2020

"No specific objective" in terms of number of users

The effectiveness of the smartphone application depends on the number of people who use it, even if the government considers it useful "from the first downloads".

"We have no specific objective" in terms of the number of users, said Cédric O who added that the application was "particularly useful" for people living in urban areas, "who take public transport and go to bars and restaurants. "

When asked if there had ever been cases of users of the application reporting their contamination with Covid-19, Cédric O referred the communication on this point to the Ministry of Health.

Leading application downloads

The app has come under criticism from those concerned that it may open the door to a surveillance company, the program of keeping track of other users crossed over the past two weeks.

StopCovid, the debating tracking application

The French government, which has chosen to entrust the design of the application to French players under the project management of the National Institute for Research in Computer Science (Inria), however stressed that the application does not manage identifiers in clear, but pseudonyms which change regularly.

He notably refused to use the customizable platform offered by the American giants Google and Apple, at the risk, according to some observers, of arriving at a product that is technically unreliable.  

The application was launched on Tuesday. Friday evening, it was still at the top of application downloads in France, according to the specialized company AppAnnie.

With AFP

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