For Cédric O, “the health interest” of TousAntiCovid is “validated”

Cédric O, the Secretary of State in charge of the digital transition and electronic communications, on November 9 in Bercy.

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• According to data collected by the government, more than 8 million people have downloaded and activated the French application intended to fight against the coronavirus since June 2.

• This Friday, the application interface will evolve and the figures for the epidemic at the departmental level will be added.

• Also mobilized on the fight against online hatred, Cédric O announces that certain provisions planned at European level and presented on December 2 will be added by amendments to the bill on “separatism”.

After a sluggish start, has the government tracking app to tackle the coronavirus outbreak find its audience?

With 8.4 million downloads and activations recorded since June 2, the Secretary of State for Digital, Cédric O, welcomes a "progression", which began on October 22 with the launch of an improved version of this tool. , renamed “TousAntiCovid”.

If France is far behind the number of registered users in Germany or the United Kingdom, the executive has however set a target of 15 million activations to be reached at the beginning of December.

An "ambitious" goal, concedes Cédric O to 

but "far from unattainable".

To achieve this, the Secretary of State wants the application to establish itself as an "individual tool for the daily management of the epidemic to make people's lives easier" and announces the implementation of new features from tomorrow.

Three weeks after its launch, what is your assessment of the new tracking application =, “TousAntiCovid”?

There is a good support from the French to the new version of the application.

Today, there are over 8.4 million downloads and activations.

It is a very good thing.

Beyond the number of activations, between 500 and 1,000 people are notified as contact cases each day and can therefore isolate themselves and be tested.

We also exceeded the threshold of 40,000 people who tested positive on the application.

This validates its health interest and it is for this reason that we set the objective of being at least 15 million downloads in early December.

Today, statistically, we have one person notified in the contact case for two people declared positive on the app.

It is still relatively low, but before the relaunch of the application, this ratio was one contact case notified for sixteen positive cases declared on the app.

So we are progressing.

Why did you set yourself this goal of 15 million activations to be achieved within a month?

Is it really achievable?

In its models, Inserm estimates that from 20% of users among the population, the impact of the application on the spread of the epidemic becomes extremely significant.

It's an ambitious goal, but when you see that the British are at 20 million downloads and the Germans at 22 million downloads, you say to yourself that it is quite possible.

If you average 200,000 to 300,000 downloads per day for 21 days, that's achievable.

It is not unattainable, but it requires that we maintain the pressure and that we all mobilize.

When the Prime Minister or the Minister of Health Olivier Véran talk about it, we clearly see an acceleration in the number of downloads.

And when the President of the Republic mentioned the application on the day of the announcement of the reconfinement, we almost reached one million downloads over three days.

Cédric O, the Secretary of State in charge of the digital transition and electronic communications, on November 9 in Bercy.

- Isabelle Harsin / SIPA for 20 Minutes

New features will be added this Friday to the application.

Which ones?

The interface will change.

We are going to highlight the derogatory travel certificate.

Too few people know that it is now accessible in a pre-filled way on the application.

You no longer need to enter your details at each trip, they are pre-recorded.

We will also give the departmental figures of the evolution of the epidemic from tomorrow.

You will be able to see how many new cases have occurred locally.

We will also highlight personalized advice in the event of a positive diagnosis and you will be able to know in real time the waiting time to obtain your results in the laboratories.

In the longer term, we are working on setting up a technological solution as an alternative to reminder notebooks for restaurateurs.

Prior to the re-containment, customers were required to leave their contact details - name and phone - with restaurateurs.

People didn't really do it, or little, and it wasn't very practical.

In England, when you walk into a restaurant, you flash a QR code with your phone and then you can be automatically notified if someone tested positive among the customers who were in that restaurant that day.

We are trying to develop a similar functionality through the application.

It is an anonymous solution and it avoids canvassing.

The implementation of this technology could usefully accompany the reopening of these establishments, obviously provided that we work on it in consultation with professionals in the sector.

We really want to make this application an individual tool for the daily management of the epidemic to make people's lives easier.

Are functionalities based on the geolocation of users being studied?

Absolutely not.

We have thought about integrating laboratory mapping into the application.

As this required geolocation, we preferred not to do so so as not to induce doubt in the minds of users.

On social networks, users quickly reported dysfunctions: lack of notification of contact with a Covid case while living with a person who tested positive and declared on the application, difficulties in obtaining his QR code with the laboratory, etc.

Are these issues resolved?

On the question of people who have not been notified, I will take the case of a journalist who had indicated that he had not been warned by the app and that we studied closely.

I called him, and asked him if his phone had been within three feet of his wife's, for at least 15 minutes and for 48 hours before the symptoms.

This was not the case.

"Test, trace, protect"

It's nice but it doesn't work.

My wife, who lives under the same roof as me, tested positive for # COVID19

so she immediately reported it on her #AllAntiCovid app.

And since (almost 36 h), my application always tells me that

👇 pic.twitter.com/5j0w0Q1Ckr

- François Beaudonnet (@beaudonnet) November 5, 2020

There may be times when the application does not work because the scope of use is quite restrictive.

And we never claimed that the app was the ultimate solution on its own.

It complements everything that already exists.

It may happen that the application misses a contact case, but it is estimated that they have risen to 80%.

On the issue of QR codes, we were indeed told that some people did not receive them on time to be able to then declare themselves positive on the app.

Several reasons can explain this.

To receive this code, the laboratory where you performed your test must have correctly entered your e-mail and telephone number.

Two out of three times it goes well and users normally receive their QR code.

For those who have not received theirs within twelve hours of their results, they can call their doctor or the laboratory that performed the test, and they can deliver it to them.

We know that for a third of users, there are problems because the information collected is not the right one, or there are input errors.

We are working to improve this.

Several studies have pointed to an increase in hateful and discriminatory messages on social networks during the first confinement.

The assassination of Samuel Paty on October 16 also revived the debate on the fight against this content in France.

A digital component could integrate the bill on "separatism", which must be presented in December.

What will it contain?

We are awaiting the presentation of a draft European text, the 

scheduled for December 2.

The provisions will be added to the law on “separatism” prepared by Gérald Darmanin, in good coordination with the European Commission.

The European legislative process is long and the text might not be adopted for several months - even if we will do everything to ensure that it ends up by the French presidency of the European Union in early 2022. It is therefore essential to act in the meantime to make the platforms more responsible.

What does the European project foresee in this regard?

As part of this new European legislation, France is promoting an obligation of means on the moderation of content for platforms and greater transparency of their algorithms.

We believe that if a network brings together a large number of French citizens, it must have a sufficient number of moderators and must acquire the necessary means internally, under the supervision of the public authorities, to act on this content.

"What we want to add in the bill is the obligation of means for platforms in terms of moderation of hate content"

Platforms cannot absolve themselves of their responsibility, especially when it comes to the most viral and violent content.

Today, we do not know how many French-language moderators officiate at Twitter.

And we are unable to verify the numbers given to us by other social networks.

It is not normal.

If this moderation is deemed insufficient, it is necessary to be able to force the platform to acquire the necessary means.

And if it does not, it must be financially sanctioned up to a certain percentage of their turnover.

This device was initially provided for in the Avia law.

Cédric O, the Secretary of State in charge of the digital transition and electronic communications, on November 9 in Bercy.

- Isabelle Harsin / SIPA for 20 Minutes

But this Avia law was largely censored by the Constitutional Council last June.

Why do you want to include certain measures in this bill on

“separatism”

 ?

Much of the Avia law has been censored as a result.

The censorship of section 1, which stipulated that hateful content should be removed in less than 24 hours, knocked out all the rest of the text which, in essence, was not censored.

It is this rest of the law, in particular the provisions relating to the obligation of means to be borne by the platforms, that we continue to push at European level and on which we are working within the framework of the bill on separatism.

If I believe the exchanges I had with Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner responsible for this directive, and Margrethe Vestager, the Vice-President of the European Commission, we are optimistic that these provisions will be incorporated into the 

.

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