SINGAPORE/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – When Singapore launched the first smartphone app of its kind last month to identify and alert people who had interacted with carriers of the novel coronavirus, the city-state of roughly 5.7 million people had 385 cases of infections.
FILE PHOTO: Contact tracing app TraceTogether, released by the Singapore government to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is seen on a mobile phone, in Singapore March 25, 2020. REUTERS/Edgar Su
But even as cases in the country – which is in lockdown – have surged past 9,000, only about one in five people have downloaded the app, TraceTogether, which uses Bluetooth signals to log when people have been close to one another.
The modest numbers in a tech-savvy country where trust in government is high shows the challenges facing public health authorities and technology experts around the world who are looking to exit lockdowns and believe contact-tracing apps can play an important role in restarting…
Source Reuters Tech News
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