A new Covid tracing app to be soon launched in France

Olivier Véran, France’s health minister and digital minister Cédric O are working on a smartphone app to reduce the spread of COVID-19. The government has approved the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project without being over confident about the app.

In Europe, it is quite sensitive to track coronavirus on mobile apps. Many nonprofit organizations have requested the government to respect human rights. The European Commission  reminded governments that they should implement “appropriate safeguards” as EU citizens are not going to trust contact-tracing apps if they don’t treat personal information appropriately.

May be this is the reason why the government is more cautious before releasing the Stop Covid app. They are developing an open standard to develop contact-tracing apps which will depend on Bluetooth Low Energy to recognize other phones running the same app.

Some people favored contact-tracing apps which could help break infection chains if you mix those apps with proactive tests and self-isolations.

Cédric O said, “We’re not sure that we can overcome all the technical difficulties because Bluetooth hasn’t been designed to measure the distance between individuals. We will decide later if it would be useful to roll out such an application or not.”