Paris (AFP)

A lot of effort for a still meager assessment: only 14 cases at risk of contamination were detected by StopCovid in three weeks of existence, the government nonetheless defending the usefulness of the tracing application against the coronavirus in order to a possible "second wave".

Installed on a mobile phone, the StopCovid application allows a user who finds himself contaminated to anonymously warn other users whom he has recently encountered using Bluetooth technology.

But according to the assessment given Tuesday by the Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O during a press conference, only 68 people have used it to date to report their contamination after having tested positive for the coronavirus.

And only 14 users of the application have received an alert message warning them that they have been in close and prolonged contact with one of these infected persons. StopCovid does not allow to know who these people are, if they have confined themselves or went to be tested in their turn.

According to the Secretary of State, these figures do not call into question the usefulness of the application and are to be linked in particular with the decrease in the prevalence of the virus in mainland France.

"We only test around 30 people a day in Paris today," he said.

According to government figures, StopCovid has been downloaded 1.9 million times, but has been uninstalled 460,000 times, for a maximum number of users between 1.4 and 1.5 million.

"We don't know if these users are in large cities or spread across the country," added Mr. O, in which case the probability of two users crossing each other would be much less.

- Increase in uninstallations -

The number of downloads remains very low compared to, for example, Germany where the equivalent application has been downloaded 10 million times, he acknowledged.

The difference with Germany "says nothing in my personal opinion" about the French application itself, but "most probably says about our cultural differences, our differences in behavior in the face of the epidemic" and "possibly, the difference in appreciation of government behavior during the epidemic, "said Cédric O.

Sign of a certain mistrust in the opinion vis-à-vis this tracking application, the number of uninstallations has greatly increased in recent days following the publication of articles revealing that it sent during a report all the history of identifiers encountered during the last 14 days at the central server and not the only identifiers detected within a meter for 15 minutes, as initially presented by the government.

This operation "is by no means a revelation", defended Cédric O, who however announced the implementation, in a future version of the application, of a filter allowing to exclude cross identifiers too away or too briefly.

The Cnil, gendarme of personal data, must also begin "in the coming days" checks to assess the compliance of this operation with respect to the decree and the GDPR, the general data protection regulations.

The secretary of state said however that he did not regret any of the choices that were made on StopCovid, believing that it will regain its usefulness if the epidemic gains strength.

"We are currently in a fairly low prevalence phase of the epidemic, but everyone is considering" the possibility of a second wave, according to him.

He intends to put "special attention" on the areas where the virus is still widely circulating and has notably started in French Guyana a communication campaign by SMS to encourage the download of the application. The treating physicians, via the Pro Santé Connect portal, will also be able to directly communicate the code allowing infected patients to report.

The Secretary of State finally provided figures on the costs of the application, with a monthly cost oscillating between a minimum of 80,000 euros in July, and a maximum of 120,000 in December (IT hosting and maintenance and development).

"This cost will increase" if there is a second wave, said Cédric O.

The budget presented provides in addition for optional "user support support" expenses of 50,000 euros per month and "deployment related" expenses of 30,000 euros per month.

© 2020 AFP