In today’s Morning Brief, we look at Alberta’s new coronavirus contact tracing app. We also examine the reasons for the difference between COVID-19 death rates in Canada and the United States, and we look at things you need to know if you’re anxious about returning to work.
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What Canada can learn from Alberta’s coronavirus contact tracing app
Alberta’s use of a smartphone app to help slow the spread of the coronavirus may provide other provinces with insight on what to do — and what to avoid — as Canada begins easing restrictions, heightening the need for effective contact tracing.
ABTraceTogether, which launched late last week, is the first such app released by a provincial public health authority. Early uptake figures and a key design quirk, however, illustrate how challenging it will be to ensure widespread adoption and efficacy in Alberta and elsewhere.
Contact tracing is the exercise of identifying and notifying people at risk of contracting the virus from someone known to have been infected. Tracing in Canada has been done manually, but an app can speed up that process, and it doesn’t require users to remember where they’ve been or with whom they’ve had contact.
Alberta’s app uses Bluetooth technology to determine who a user has spent time with (at least 15 minutes in a 24-hour period). But it only works if everyone involved has the app running on their phone and Bluetooth enabled.
As of Tuesday, the app had been downloaded just over 120,000 times. If each download accounts for a new user, that makes up less than three per cent of the province’s population of around 4.4 million. British researchers suggested a similar app would only be effective if it were adopted by 56 per cent of the U.K.’s population.
Users who’ve installed the app may have trouble using it effectively. Those running Apple’s iOS mobile operating system are advised to “place your phone upside down or screen side down in your pocket” to keep their screen unlocked while out running essential errands. That’s because the app doesn’t work properly when running in the background. In other words, it can’t guarantee contact tracing continues while a user opens an email or replies to a text message. “If you need to use other apps, just remember to switch back” afterward, an app FAQ states.
Alberta Health Minister Tyler Shandro said Apple has been made aware of the issue. “We’re looking forward to the fix being able to make its way to the App Store as soon as possible,” he said. Read more on this story here.
Your greenhouse is ready
(Robin van Lonkhuijsen/ANP/AFP/Getty Images)
A group of friends has dinner in a so-called quarantine greenhouse in Amsterdam on Tuesday evening. The greenhouse is meant to help contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.
In brief
The COVID-19 mortality rate in the United States is about two times higher than that of Canada, with more than 200 deaths per million versus 100 per million in Canada. CBC News consulted five infectious disease experts, academic studies and data collected by governments and companies to try and find out why. The overwhelming opinion points to three main contributors: longstanding issues related to health care, politics and one particular city. While every expert agreed the U.S. government flubbed its early response to the pandemic, most said the administration of President Donald Trump was just one element in the bigger story. Read more from CBC Washington correspond