TousAntiCovid is extended until January 2023: what is the app still for? | TechBuzz

The government and Parliament have decided to lift on August 1, 2022 the exceptional measures that have been deployed for more than two years due to the covid-19 pandemic. This, despite a still significant circulation of the coronavirus in France, with an incidence rate of 500 out of 100,000 inhabitants at the national level, and while the summer was marked by a seventh wave.

The end of the state of health emergency has thus put an end to several measures. It is no longer possible to resort to confinement and curfew. Wearing a mask in public places can no longer be required. In addition, the prospect of making a health pass compulsory has also been ruled out. In fact, these measures had already been reduced or even stopped months ago.

TousAntiCovid remains in place until January 2023

However, all the tools put in place during this period are not stored in the closet. Some information systems are still operational, in particular to continue monitoring sick people, alerting contact cases, keeping the results of screening tests, and producing certificates. And it’s the same for TousAntiCovid.

The famous “contact tracing” application, which was formerly called StopCovid, will also continue to operate for at least six months. In a decree published in the Official Journal on July 31, 2022, the government approved the extension of this system. A previous decree, issued on May 29, 2020, has been amended accordingly to allow this extension.

Here, the government is extending the implementation of the TousAntiCovid application until January 31, 2023. The data processing on which it is based also benefits from this extension. Incidentally, the decree removes the information feature for users who have visited a place in which a person diagnosed or tested positive for covid-19 was at the same time. »

TousAntiCovid’s interest has waned considerably since the removal of the compulsory nature of a health pass at the entrance to certain places – the application then served as a digital document holder for its certificates (vaccination, negative test or recovery). Ditto for travel certificates, which are no longer required.

Initially, TousAntiCovid’s main mission was to do contact tracing using technology: by activating the Bluetooth of the smartphone, it was theoretically possible to transmit pseudonymized information between passers-by in the street, in transport or in a place. , to find out if you have been in contact with a person at risk.

Two years later, however, the usefulness of TousAntiCovid for contact tracing is not obvious. It must be said that its effectiveness depended on many preliminary criteria, such as the possession of a smartphone, the activation of Bluetooth and the registration of its state of health in the application. And the Bluetooth connection also had to work well.

The National Commission for Computing and Liberties (Cnil) also pointed to the marginal usefulness of TousAntiCovid in a report submitted in early July 2022. If the application claims 59 million downloads, more than 4.2 million notified by TAC and more than 5.4 million declared positive, the Cnil does not however judge these figures ” not particularly high ».

What is TousAntiCovid still for?

Does TousAntiCovid no longer have any use? If its role is very debatable on contact tracing and its secondary function as a briefcase has been rendered useless by a significant decline in the pandemic, making it possible to lift severe restrictions on travel and access to public places, the application still has some additional features.

• Find a vaccination center near you;
• Know if you are eligible for a booster shot;
• Know the latest news on the pandemic;
• View pandemic and vaccination statistics;

Of course, you can always activate contact tracing via Bluetooth and report yourself sick in the application, if necessary. You can also add your certificates in the application, even if these are not currently requested, except in very special cases – such as a trip between France and overseas.

The low intensity of the seventh wave and the encouraging prospects as to the dynamics of the pandemic should obviously not be a cause for too much relaxation: there are always good things to do to avoid being infected during the summer. And the isolation rules still need to be followed very carefully.

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