After a successful test in mid-September, the European Union is preparing to launch, in mid-October, its interoperability gateway service that links mobile applications for tracing people who have been in contact with someone sick with Covid-19 (see EUROPE 12559/13).
According to a senior European official, this service is expected to be activated in three Member States—namely Germany, Ireland, and Italy—on 17 October.
These countries will be joined by the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Latvia between now and the end of October and, gradually, by others.
The European gateway enables national tracing applications based on a decentralised model to operate across borders. Managed from Luxembourg, it ensures secure transmission and hosting of the pseudonymised data collected.
At present, 14 Member States (Austria, Italy, Latvia, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Ireland, Croatia, Spain, the Netherlands, Finland, Portugal, Estonia, and France) offer mobile proximity contact tracing and warning applications. Belgium is expected to launch its ‘Coronalert’ on 30 September, and four other EU countries (Lithuania, Malta, Cyprus, and the Czech Republic) are planning to introduce one in the near future.
At present, the success of these applications is, however, mixed, seeing as, on average, 10% of the population has downloaded their national application. “It’s still early days”, said one Commission official. Another asserted that, in Germany, the download rate is closer to 25–30%. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)