WASHINGTON (ABC7) — You may have received an alert on your cellphone to "opt-in" to COVID-19 exposure notifications or vaguely heard about the different apps you can now download. ABC7 talked with D.C. Health, the Maryland Department of Health, and the Virginia Department of Health to get a clear idea of how this technology works while getting answers on how these systems protect your privacy.
First, what is this system and who built it?
The exposure notifications system currently being used in D.C. and Maryland was created by Google and Apple, "out of a shared sense of responsibility to help governments and our global community fight this pandemic through contact tracing."
Virginia is currently using an app it created on its own.
ALSO READ: Virginia's COVIDWISE app notifies up to 120 people a day of possible coronavirus exposure
Second, what are the different COVID-19 alert systems called?
In D.C. you can opt into DC CAN. Apple users can enable it right in their phone settings under "exposure notifications." Android users can download the app from Google Play. D.C. Health reports that as of this week, roughly 367,000 people have opted in.
Maryland's is calling it MD COVID Alert. Apple users can enable it right in their phone settings under "exposure notifications." Android users can download the app from Google Play. The Maryland Department of Health is reporting that more than 950,000 phones have it.
The current system in Virginia is called COVIDWISE. Right now, Apple and Android users can download the app to their phones. The Virginia Department of Health is reporting that the app has almost 800,000 downloads.
ALSO READ: DC launching new contact tracing tool to notify residents of possible exposure to COVID
How do these systems work?
In all three areas, the process of how this works is relatively the same:
1. You first need to opt-in to the notification system on your phone.
2. Bluetooth needs to always be turned on for it to work.
3. Once you opt-in, and Bluetooth is on, your phone will be assigned a random number ID. This sequence of numbers will change 10-20 minutes to help ensure the ID can't be used to identify you or your location.
4. Using Bluetooth, your phone will detect other phones close by that have also opted-in to the notification system. Your phones will then exchange those random ID numbers.
5. Your phone will periodically check all the random IDs associated with positive COVID cases against its own list of IDs it's been within about six feet of.
6. If there is a match, you will get a COVID-19 exposure notification on your phone and are advised to monitor symptoms, quarantine for 14 days, and get tested.
"It's privacy-preserving, so it doesn't collect any individual identifiers," said Dr. Katherine Feldman, Director of the Contact Tracing Unit and Chief Public Health Scientist at the Maryland Department of Health. These two phones share these random IDs that don't allow anyone to have any insight into who this person is, who was either later diagnosed with COVID-19 or was exposed."
What if you have COVID-19?
With or without the app, if you get a positive COVID result you will be contacted by contact tracers. They will ask you if you enabled the exposure notifications. If you say yes, they will give you a code if you chose to report you're positive result to the system.
"They are going to give you a unique code," said Jeff Stover, MPH, Executive Advisor to the Commissioner at the Virginia Department of Health. "That way someone can't go rogue and decide it would be cute to submit 50 positive COVID results. You can't do that. You have to have a validated code from the health department."
Even if you opt-in to the system, it's your call on whether you are going to report that positive result on the app or not. If you do report it on that app, it will trigger alerts to other phones that may have been in close contact with you within the past 14 days. Feldman said the person on the receiving end of the notification would only get notified of the date the possible exposure occurred.
People move around D.C., Maryland, and Virginia often, is there interoperability between the systems?
D.C. and Maryland and interoperable. MD COVID Alert will exchange information with DC CAN, in addition to other states with an exposure notification app that's using the National Key Server. This is the server where positive results are reported to and then it will run IDs to find any phones that may have been in close contact.
As of this writing, participating states include:
States piloting the app with a limited amount of people on the National Key Server include:
What about Virginia?
The COVIDWISE app is currently not using the National Key Server but plans to start soon.
"COVIDWISE in Virginia was the first app in the country to do exposure notification. So, we were ahead of the curb as far as how you can report positive results anonymously. In other words, we had to set up our own infrastructure. A few weeks after we launched a National Key Server and it was put in place," Stover said. We're expecting that to go live for us almost any day now. It's probably going to be within the week."
As soon as that is in place, Virginia will then be interoperable with D.C. and Maryland.
I cross jurisdictions often, do I enable DC CAN, MD COVID Alert, or COVIDWISE?
"You should enable the one where you live," Feldman said. "If you're a Maryland resident you should download MD COVID Alert. Keep that on, keep that enabled. You don't need to switch apps, switch your geographic region when you cross borders. MD COVID Alert will be exchanging these random IDs with all the other phones that have exposure notifications enabled in D.C. and in the various other jurisdictions that use the same technology."
"If you want to do your part if you were positive, it needs to be the system that comes from the jurisdiction where you reside," Stover said.
How is it going?
Both Feldman and Stover said it is too early to understand the impact of these exposure notification apps, but things are moving in a positive direction.
"This is about the community; the ball is in your court as a citizen. You get to choose whether you're going to download it, you get to choose whether you're going to turn on exposure notifications, "Stover said.
"We see this as another tool to help stop the spread of COVID-19. This doesn't replace contact tracing; this isn't an alternative to contact tracing. This is another tool that really helps work to stop the spread of COVID-19, and with case counts skyrocketing as they are, we should take advantage of any tool available to us to help stop the spread," Feldman said.
