ROMA – Immuni now try to imagine a life beyond the flop. From April 7th, the app update that has been awaited for months is available. Now users who are positive for the virus can use it to independently initiate close contact tracking. Without having to go to the sanitary ware, which proved to be the most serious bottleneck for this app (as also recognized by the last government)
The app, run by the Ministry of Health, would potentially serve to save lives: as is the case in Germany and the UK, according to the latest available data. The new update eliminates the last objective obstacles to the possibility, even for us, to make this automatic contact tracking system work well.
Basically, it is now possible to do-it-yourself “unlock” of the app. Unlocking means the possibility, for Covid positive users to trigger the warning system to all other Immune users with whom they have been in close contact. The latter will receive the notification that “close contact” has occurred, therefore at risk of contagion, with a positive user (who remains anonymous).
As explained by the new Immuni faq, modified for the latest update “Immuni can be unlocked by the citizen who has the APP on his mobile phone, and who has tested positive for the molecular swab test”. “This operation can be carried out with the support of the healthcare professional who communicated the positive result of the swab to you, or if you have received the CUN (unique code of confirmation of positivity, ed.) with the support of the call center operator 800912491 or independently with the specific function available in the app. Attention: GPs are not authorized to support the release of Immune ”.
In short: you can do everything via app, possibly with the support of the call center for those who cannot do it alone. The update had already been ready for nearly three months, reportedly a Republic, and had already received the OK from the Privacy Guarantor since the end of February. The Ministry of Health has waited until now to publish the update. A wait that confirms the weak interest in supporting the app.
Immuni has so far traced very few infections precisely because there has been a lack of collaboration with health professionals and with the entire health system. All this despite the large number of downloads, around 10 million, which are now a promising base to start over with the app.
It went better in other countries, with pure apps based on the same technology as Immuni. The data of the German government report almost three thousand daily uses of their app by positives (18% of infections): almost a hundred times more than in Italy. A recent study ofTuring Institute and Oxford University reported that the UK app had managed to block around 600 covid outbreaks as of February.
According to the study, one of the success factors is the close connection between the app and the health system. “There it is even possible to book a tampon after receiving the notification, directly via the app. An option that is not yet possible with us, although many experts have been asking for it for months, ”he says Riccardo Berti, a lawyer who has been following the Covid-19 automatic tracking theme since last spring.
“In any case, the do-it-yourself upgrade is an important innovation and could give a valuable new life to this potentially life-saving tool, especially in the life of summer travel,” he says. Berti. “Among other things, we remind you that the app also works in many European countries”, he adds.
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