If you can travel again: Corona tracing app should be ready on time

According to the federal government, the corona tracing app for tracking infection chains will be published as planned in mid-June. This would allow her to return to European freedom of travel in good time. Then it just has to work.

The planned corona tracing app in Germany should be ready in time for the planned return to freedom of travel in Europe in mid-June. Government spokesman Steffen Seibert said the date was "roughly in line with the current plan". At the same time, he made it clear that a quarantine application brought up by Minister of Health Jens Spahn (CDU) was not a sub-function of the warning app. "These are two separate things."

"Symptom diary" alternative to telephone calls

The Ministry of Health emphasized that the "symptom diary" is not an app, but an internet platform. "This platform helps to relieve those affected and the health authorities when contact persons of infected people are sent to quarantine." In such cases, the health authorities are currently checking the state of health twice a day. "As an alternative, those affected should be able to enter their health status in the symptom diary on the internet platform in the future."

The use is voluntary. Before the project goes online, it is checked in detail with regard to data protection and data security. An extended test phase for the use of the digital symptom diary for the automated questioning of patients in quarantine has now been started.

Advertising campaign planned

The Corona app, which is being developed by SAP and Deutsche Telekom, is intended to send a notification to users if they have been around someone who has tested positive for the causative agent of the lung disease Covid-19 for a long time. The necessary data for contacts registered via Bluetooth should not be stored centrally, but only with the user himself. So far, the health authorities have tried to track infection chains by telephone so that the virus does not spread.

Seibert confirmed a "Spiegel" report that the government has commissioned an agency to develop an advertising campaign. This corresponds to the information order. However, the report partly used "very early sketches for this campaign, some of which are already out of date". He is currently unable to provide any information about the costs.

Transparent development should create acceptance

According to government officials, app developers have had very good feedback from the online community. On Wednesday, a first concept was made public on the Github platform – the world's largest platform for the development of open source software.

Government circles emphasized that the community wanted to be involved in the development process. The more people would be involved and the more participation there was in the development process of the app, the more it would help the technology, the quality and ultimately acceptance of the population and the security of the app. There are currently more than 180 observers and around 50 subgroups on Github who deal with the concept.

Further development stages are to be made public in the course of the coming weekend and on Monday. First of all, the technical app architecture should be made accessible on Github. The first parts of the program code for the server infrastructure should follow on Monday evening.