To beat back the second wave of COVID-19, resume more activities and restart Alaska’s economy, there are two linchpins: abundant testing and robust contact tracing. We need plenty of testing, far more than is currently occurring, to be sure we’re catching not only symptomatic COVID-19 cases, but also the pernicious asymptomatic cases, where carriers can spread the disease far and wide without ever realizing they’re ill. And we need tracing, lots of it, to be able to contact people whom COVID-19 carriers have potentially exposed to the disease, get them tested and have them quarantine until we’re sure they aren’t sick too.
During the second wave of infections, our testing capacity has scaled up with several new sites in Anchorage added by the municipal government, but our tracing capacity has been overwhelmed — a phenomenon you can see for yourself by looking at the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, which shows that the sources of the vast majority of cases during the past month and a half are still under investigation. Clearly, we need to do more. Fortunately for us, the two biggest tech companies in the world just made that a lot easier for us — if state health authorities do a little work to enable it.
Exposure Notification Express
In spring, recognizing the need for an all-hands approach to combating the pandemic, Apple and Google put their differences aside and hammered out an ingenious system to help aid in contact tracing. Not surprisingly, their effort focused on the device nearly all of us carry at all times: our phones.
Using the low-energy, short-range Bluetooth beacon function, the system Apple and Google developed talks to nearby phones and exchanges basic, encrypted information with the ones that come nearest to yours — near enough to have passed on the virus. If someone you came into contact with is diagnosed with COVID-19, their phone can share its encrypted “contact log,” sending notifications to the other devices it was close to that they might have been exposed to the virus. They let state health authorities know about the technology but, not surprisingly, most states were swamped with other COVID-19-related tasks and didn’t develop an app that could help notify residents based on the Apple-Google framework. But now the two companies have built their functionality into the operating system (on Apple, in a new Exposure Notification setting) and a custom app (on Android) themselves, and the amount of work required of state health authorities is far less. Six states have already developed their own apps to use the framework, and 25 others are working on enabling it. Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services should take advantage of the system as soon as possible to help aid in contact tracing teams’ work.
Privacy questions
It’s natural that people might raise an eyebrow at a system working in the background to keep a log of devices you’re near to — we live in a surveillance age, and everyone is wary of Big Brother, particularly independent-minded Alaskans. In working out their system, Apple and Google realized that. Here are a few reasons you shouldn’t be worried that Apple, Google or the government can use the system to track where you’ve been or who you’ve been around.
1. Location data isn’t tracked — your phone simply keeps a log of other devices it encounters, not where those contacts took place.
2. It requires permission — the system is opt-in, so you have to agree to participate, and you’re notified about what data you’ll be sharing and how it could be used.
3. No one’s names, devices or contact information are captured or stored by Apple, Google or the government — the devices trade encrypted codes that aren’t meaningful without a key, and the codes themselves change every 10-20 minutes to keep from being identifiable to a particular device over time, making the system anonymous to anyone on the outside.
What the state needs to do
Apple and Google have done much of the work by building the system, but DHSS must still do its part so that Alaskans can opt into the contact tracing system. Specifically, state health authorities need to build a relatively simple file that determines when to notify people who may have been exposed to the virus, based on their proximity to a known case and the duration of that exposure. It’s far easier to accomplish than coding an app, but until the state does it, Alaskans can’t reap the benefit of the system.
DHSS must also embark on a massive public awareness campaign to educate Alaskans on the benefits of opting into this system, which would effectively increase the state’s tracing capacity exponentially. CARES Act funds should be immediately allocated toward this effort. In a state like Alaska, where communities are tight-knit and many people can be reached via a relatively small number of avenues, spreading the word should be quick and simple.
What you can do
If you’re on an Apple device, immediately download and install iOS 13.7, which became available Sept. 1 — it’s a free upgrade and works with every Apple phone made since 2015. In the Settings app, you’ll notice a new Exposure Notification section; go there and turn on notifications about COVID-19 exposure. You should also turn on availability alerts, as that will notify you when Alaska has set up its part of the notification system. If you’re using an Android device, Google will be rolling out its version of the system later this month as an app.
It’s important to note that this is a system that will only work as well as we let it. More than 80% of Americans use smart phones, and virtually all of them run Apple or Google’s operating systems, so the potential exists for us to create a vast, near-complete real-time contact tracing network that will spare overworked human tracers a tremendous amount of work. But for that to happen, the state has to develop its configuration data and we have to turn on notifications for tracing. Enabling this system will be one more step toward slowing COVID-19, keeping more people from getting sick and our already fragile economy from collapsing. For our health, for our neighbors and for our economic well-being, let’s do our part.