Faizel Patel – 01/09/2020
South Africa now has its own COVID-19 contact tracing mobile app.
The Health Department has launched COVID Alert SA, to strengthen South Africa’s digital contact tracing efforts.
In a statement, the department says prior to launching the new app, it deployed teams to conduct manual contact tracing in every district.
Later it launched the WhatsApp-based COVIDConnect service which allows index cases to anonymously notify their contacts as prompted by the system.
The Health Department says the new COVID Alert SA app will complement and strengthen these existing methods, as a powerful tool to enable the instant notification of contacts following a positive test.
“COVID Alert SA is built on the exposure notification Application Programming Interface (API) developed by Apple and Google to enable contact tracing through mobile phones. The app is fully privacy-preserving, in line with the requirements of the API, and does not collect any personally identifiable information or trace a user’s location.”
Using Bluetooth, the COVID Alert SA app emits a randomly generated code that is picked by other users when two phones come into proximity of one another. This unique identifier changes frequently and cannot be linked to the identity of any user. Over time, each user builds an “encounter history” of those they have been in contact with.
When a user tests positive, they are requested to report their diagnosis anonymously in the COVID Alert SA app. When the user does so, all other users with whom they have been in contact for the past 14 days will immediately be notified of their exposure and prompted through the care pathway. At no point in this process is the identity of any user revealed.
Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing apps allow a greater number of contacts to be traced more rapidly, including strangers whom an index case may not be able to recall or identify.
The COVID Alert SA app is free and uses a small amount of data. It is available for Android devices on the Google Play store and on the Apple App Store for iPhones, with the South African National Department of Health as publisher.
The Health Department says the COVID Alert SA app was developed at no cost to the department, through a partnership with developers at Discovery Health, Apple and Google.
The Department says it is grateful to its partners for their contribution, including the Banking Association of South Africa and its members as well as mobile networks Cell C, Telkom, MTN and Vodacom.
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