The idea: beautiful. An app that leads Switzerland out of the corona pandemic. The system: simple. Infected people can enter a code in the Swisscovid app, after which everyone who has had recent contact with the infected person and who also has the app will receive a warning. The benefit, however: modest.
Since the app was launched on June 25, 2020, 121,432 codes have been entered. At the same time, 1.6 million positive corona tests were confirmed. It must therefore be questioned whether Switzerland would come through the crisis less well without an app.
Found one to two percent of cases
The app was originally launched to help with contact tracing. So that you can protect yourself and test who may be infected. When the number of infections was in the double and triple digits in the summer of 2020 and the main thing was to keep the fall curve flat, the app could have shone. A year later, however, the Zurich university professor Viktor von Wyl reported in a study that between January and April 2021, thanks to the app, 500 to 1000 positive cases were found per month – or one to two percent of all cases. At the same time, a total of over 200,000 people in Switzerland tested positive for Corona. Previous studies had yielded similar results.
Meanwhile, the case numbers are in five figures. For a long time now, it has no longer been about doing corona tracing, but about preventing severe courses. The app is not intended for that.
Developers want more advertising, federal government doesn’t
Marcel Salathé sees it differently. The epidemiologist helped develop the app and was a member of the federal corona task force until February 2021. There is hardly an interview in which he would fail to mention the app. On Wednesday he said in the “Tagesschau” that he wished the authorities would do more advertising. People haven’t heard from the app in a long time.
However, the federal government says to Blick that it has done enough advertising for the app. And in fact, you can’t blame him for belittling the app. In addition to advertisements, posters, influencers and TV spots, completely new paths were taken in Bern and even relied on Tiktok, Instagram quizzes and Skype sessions. But the fact is: the Federal Statistical Office currently has 1.6 million active app users. The number has remained roughly the same since July 2020 (it was less at the beginning, which prompted the federal government to adjust its calculation method). However, it is far from the goal that the BAG originally announced: three million active users.
The number of codes entered increases
Nevertheless, the federal government defends the app. The Federal Department of Home Affairs (EDI) reports that it is still active and functioning. However, adds that it is currently used primarily as an awareness-raising tool.
But you can see that it still makes sense from the number of Covid codes entered. This has increased in the last few days, currently there are regularly between 1000 and 2000 codes per day. With around 30,000 infections reported every day, this is only a drop in the corona ocean.
100 francs per code
Was it worth the investment? For the prototype and the development of the contact tracing method, the EPFL in Lausanne had a maximum of five million francs at its disposal, as exponents told the Sunday newspaper in summer 2020. In addition, up to CHF 7.3 million will be invested by the federal government until June 2022. Makes around 12 million francs or 100 francs per code entered.
But how many infections has the Corona app prevented so far? The EDI would also like to know the answer, according to its own statement, but an analysis is not possible for data protection reasons. The office assumes that up to four people will be notified for each code entered, which “confirms the effectiveness and usefulness of the app”. Only: Evaluations of the Infoline Swiss Covid show that in the last few days only one person for every two codes reported and said they had been warned.
Omikron app overwhelmed
The utility of the app is unlikely to increase in the coming weeks. She is overwhelmed by Omicron. It is set to require being within 2 meters of an infected person for at least 15 minutes for an alert to activate. That made sense with the original variant of the virus, but not anymore, says developer Marcel Salathé of the “Tagesschau”: “With more contagious viruses, infections can take place in a shorter time and over a greater distance. The app can no longer intercept this because it is not set up for it.”
According to the federal government, they are in the process of repositioning and adapting the app for the next few weeks and months. A schedule cannot be given.