The team developing Switzerland’s coronavirus contact-tracing app says it has become the first to have launched a product incorporating a technology provided by Apple and Google.
Members of the Swiss army, hospital workers and civil servants can now install the SwissCovid app ahead of a planned wider rollout.
According to reports, a Latvian coalition says it is running close behind.
But the US tech firms face criticism for their prescriptive approach.
Automated contact tracing involves using smartphones to detect when two people are close to each other for long enough that there is a significant risk of contagion, so that one can be warned if the other is later diagnosed with having the disease.
To make use of their API (application programming interface) – a software tool that gives special access to some features of their iOS and Android mobile operating systems – the two companies have forbidden participants from gathering users’ location data, among other restrictions.
That means that apps that pursue a rival “centralised” model will continue to face circumstances when iPhones fail to carry out the required Bluetooth-based “handshakes”, it said.
