Virginia launches voluntary COVID-tracking smartphone app

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam today announced that Virginia is the first state in the country to launch a smartphone application that will help with contact-tracing for COVID-19 cases.

The COVIDWISE app will notify users who have voluntarily signed up by notifying them if they have come into contact with anyone who has tested positive.

“COVIDWISE uses Bluetooth Low Energy technology to quickly notify users who have likely been exposed so you can reduce the risk of infection for your friends and family and help Virginia stop the spread,” according to a Virginia Department of Health statement. “Contact tracing is a technique used by public health authorities to contact and give guidance to anyone who may have been exposed to a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.”

According to Northam and VDH, once a user opts-in to the notification system, the Exposure Notifications System will generate an anonymous token for his or her device. To help ensure these anonymous tokens can’t be used to identify users or their location, the tokens will change several times a day.

The app is built on Apple' and Google’s Exposure Notification system that allows smartphones to exchange anonymous keys over Bluetooth.

“This app doesn’t know who you are, or where you are,” said Norman Oliver, the Virginia state health commissioner.

Users phones will work in the background to exchange these privacy-preserving anonymous tokens via Bluetooth Low Energy technology, a passive process that begins once a user opts-in and functions without having the app open.

Northam’s administration was adamant that this app will not track location; instead, he said, it will be tracking distance and Bluetooth strength between devices. The GPS function on phones will not be used at all, according to Northam.

On a daily basis, the app will download a list of all the anonymous tokens associated with positive COVID-19 cases and check them against the list of anonymous tokens it has encountered in the last 14 days.

If there’s a match, the app will notify users with further instructions from a public health authority about what steps to take. The app currently supports English and Spanish languages.

The app is available in the Apple App Store and on Google Play. You can find more information about here.

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This article first appeared on VirginiaScope.com and is republished here with permission.