Across the world, governments and health authorities are working together to find solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, to protect people and get society back up and running. Software developers are contributing by crafting technical tools to help combat the virus and save lives. In this spirit of collaboration, Google and Apple are announcing a joint effort to enable the use of Bluetooth technology to help governments and health agencies reduce the spread of the virus, with user privacy and security central to the design.
Initially, for the contact-tracing to work, a user will need to download a smartphone app from an official health department which will then use the new bluetooth feature. Later, both Android and iOS will have baked-in user interfaces which can allow users' devices to start some of the process themselves, but will need to download an app later if they do test positive and wish to share that information in an attempt to warn others, the companies said on the press call. The system is designed to do this anonymously through identifiers that change regularly and does not use location data itself, the companies said.
For the last eight months we’ve been working with Apple on the Exposure Notifications System (ENS) to help public health authorities in their efforts to contain COVID-19. We wanted to provide an update on this work.
