Virus tracing apps need big adoption for success: Study

By Ovunc Kutlu

ANKARA (AA) - Applications used for coronavirus contact tracing need to be adopted widely around the world to become successful, according to a study Wednesday.

A research team from the UK's Queen Mary University studied the effectiveness of a Spanish app, Radar Covid, with a four-week experiment in Canary Islands, Spain, between June and July 2020.

The study included a series of COVID-19 infection simulations to understand the effectiveness of an app’s technology to assess if it would work in a real-world environment to contain an outbreak.

The results showed that when 30% of the population used the app, it could detect an average of 6.3 close contacts per individual.

This was more than two times higher than average contacts detected by using manual tracing.

The study stressed the effectiveness and success of the app largely depends on widespread campaigns to encourage individuals to download and use it on local and national levels.