APP LEAVES ELDERLY IN THE DARK

Launched with great fanfare, this technology can tell if you are in contact with coronavirus... but most vulnerable can’t access it

THE Government’s new phone app to help battle coronavirus, launched with great fanfare yesterday, is of limited use to those who need it most, it has emerged.

The majority of our elderly people will be excluded from using the Covid-19 tracker as they don’t own smartphones, Age Action has warned.

Yet they are the most vulnerable to the deadly virus – out of the 598 people who died from it in May, 572 were over 65.

The charity has now pleaded with the Government to help the elderly get access to the app.

The Covid contact-tracing application has already been installed by three-quarters of a million people, though it has only just been launched. However,

Celine Clarke, head of advocacy at Age Action Ireland, said: ‘A third of people aged between 60 and 74 have never been on the internet, according to the latest CSO figures.’

‘We don’t know how many over75s are online, but our estimate would be 3%,’ Ms Clarke said.

‘And although there has been an increase in older people getting online in recent years, many have below basic skills.

‘This is why we’re concerned that those most vulnerable to this virus won’t be able to participate in the Covid-tracking app.’

She said: ‘I’m concerned that many older people will be very worried about not being able to access this app, especially when they hear that a huge number of the population have already downloaded it.

‘It would be great if the Government could provide a support line for those who aren’t media savvy and would like to find out how to get this app.’ Three in five people aged 80 and older do not have access to the internet, according to a study by Trinity College Dublin released just last month.

It also emerged that devices more than five years old also lack the chips and software needed to run the app, meaning many smartphone owners will not have access to the app, or will be forced to buy a new phone.

The HSE said it is not available on any phone model older than an iPhone 6S or a phone that runs Android Six or older.

In the face of these difficulties,

It won’t work on older phones

Age Action called on friends and family members to help elderly people understand the software.

‘If you know an older person who has a smartphone and would like to download it, then we would encourage anyone to sit down with them and talk them through it,’ Ms Clarke said.

Kerry TD Danny Healy-Rae told the Irish Daily Mail that he won’t be able to download the app since he still uses a button phone, Nokia 3310 that’s nearly 20 years old.

‘I’ve never found the need to update my phone and I’m certainly not the only person in the country who doesn’t have the most up-todate technology either,’ he said. ‘I think it’s very wrong that so many older people and non-computersavvy people will be excluded from this app. What about them? Do they not matter?

‘And it’s not just the elderly that will be affected; in rural areas all over the country people don’t have access to the internet so how can the Government expect them to download it?’

Launching the app yesterday, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly urged people to help those who are not technologically literate. The app uses Bluetooth technology to warn smartphone owners that they have come into contact with someone who has since been diagnosed with the virus, advising them to selfisolate. If it detects that it is within two metres of another phone with the app, for 15 minutes or more, it will How can we help most vulnerable: Celine Clarke log it anonymously on a list of ‘close contacts’.

If someone tests positive for Covid-19 they can give permission to the contact-tracing team to access that anonymous list. The team will then contact anyone who is considered to be a close contact, to warn them.

Mr Donnelly said if someone tests positive for Covid-19, they will receive a phone call with advice.

‘If you have the tracker app, you will be asked for your permission for your phone to share the close contact information. You can say no at this point. The app is opt-in – no-one is being forced to download or use it.’

And he said it will work everywhere in the country, regardless of internet access.

‘The app works with Bluetooth technology, it works phone-tophone. If two people meet on top of Carrauntoohil in Co. Kerry for 15 minutes, the phones will log that,’ he said.

‘The app is not active in the Six Counties right now. We would very much like it to be across the entire island, but certainly, for now, anyone who is crossing the border should absolutely download the app,’ he said.

Acting Chief Medical Officer Ronan Glynn said the app had approximately 750,000 downloads.

HSE chief executive Paul Reid appealed to people to tell everyone in their networks to download it.

He said: ‘If every one of us asks all of our network to download the app today, we will capture everyone we need.

‘If everyone asks everyone in their network to download this app, that’s the level we’re looking for in uptake.’ He said some analysis suggested the app would need to get up to 60% penetration to be effective in preventing the spread of the virus but added: ‘When you start to look at the population that we have, I think the building of

momentum is the most important thing for us first.’ He warned, however, that at the same time, it is not a ‘silver bullet’ and will only complement the existing contact-tracing system. Dr Glynn said that until there is a vaccine against Covid19, social distancing, hand hygiene, and mask wearing will still be key to battling the virus.

He said: ‘The Covid-19 tracker app will be a very important addition to this and will increase our capacity to combat the spread of the disease.’

Dr Glynn added: ‘We realise that high uptake requires public trust and confidence... This is why such attention has been paid to data protection and privacy.’

He said research shows that a large majority of the Irish public said they would download the app, and he is confident people will get on board.

This comes as the latest figures have revealed that one more person has died with Covid-19 and 24 more have been diagnosed with the virus.

AN APP is not a vaccine. That is blindingly obvious but it’s a fact that might be overlooked given the hype that accompanied the launch of the HSE’s Covid-19 app yesterday. The app has its benefits but it is not going to prevent people contracting the virus that causes the sometimes deadly illness and it will not cure them if they do.

It may be a help though in assisting valuable contact tracing, the process in which the health authorities on discovering a person who has Covid-19 chases down the people with whom the victims have been in contact. This allows them to identify and isolate those who also have Covid-19 but who may not be displaying symptoms. It is one of the key ways to defeat the illness.

That is why many of you – and I – were among the hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded the app to smartphones yesterday. It was a remarkable display of public support for a measure that may help in the fight against Covid-19’s resurgence in a second wave.

Sensible

However, how many of those who downloaded it were among the numbers who congregated in the open-air of Dame Lane in Dublin last Saturday evening to sink pints? How many people will hand their smartphones to friends in pubs and restaurants in coming evenings to show them how the app works – and in doing so unwittingly increase the risk of transferring the virus by the very handling of the phone?

What defence will an app provide if people do not engage in adequate and sensible social distancing, discontinue the practice of regularly washing their hands and fail to wear a mask on public transport or when doing their shopping? What good will it do if people pick up the illness on foreign travel and do not self-isolate on their return, or are foreign people who come to this country by plane or ferry, promise to isolate for two weeks and then fail to do so?

We should all be aware that the app is not some kind of magic solution – and in fairness to the HSE and new Health Minister Stephen Donnelly they have not claimed it is a ‘silver bullet’.

The app might not work properly, for a variety of reasons. For one, it might not be used by the public on a sufficient scale: if too few people carry the app on their phones then the number of contacts that can be chased down by this method will be very limited. Some experts have suggested that a 60% uptake of the population might be needed, which would be very difficult to attain, but others say 20% would still be a major help.

Part of the beauty of the technology is that with a positive result for Covid-19 someone with the app will be asked if that information, but not their identity, can be transmitted to everyone’s phone with whom their phone came into contact. So, if you sat for 15 minutes on the bus with strangers you might get a message to tell you that one of those fellow passengers has tested positive and that you, too, should now get checked, even if you haven’t felt ill. If used properly, it should help the authorities get to the ill more quickly.

That’s the theory anyway. It is not certain that the Bluetooth technology will always work.

Civil liberties groups have voiced some objections to the potential accumulation and use of information by the app and these worries are shared by citizens, some of whom unfortunately are prone to disappearing down conspiracy-theory rabbit holes. They say they won’t allow the State to download an app onto their phones for fear of their privacy or security being compromised.

But many of these people are more than happy to carry a portable tracking device in their pocket (because that is what a mobile phone has become) and they regularly post on social media sites that are regularly monitored by private corporate interests who mine their data relentlessly. It is not necessarily the State that should concern them but Google and Apple who are providing the platforms for the app and who could, in theory, in time take it.

Confidence

However, such errant behaviour is surely most unlikely: the consequences for the public confidence in the brands if caught doing something like this would be large. But what might be as interesting is the reaction that would come from Irish people if instead of an app they were being offered a vaccine.

Worryingly, talk of a breakthrough in the creation and distribution of a vaccine has quietened. The hopes of it being available in time to stave off a second wave this autumn and winter have dimmed.

But just imagine that it becomes available. How quickly would Irish people rush out to get stocks?

Amazingly, a survey published in the UK yesterday suggested one in six there would refuse a Covid-19 vaccine and the same number again are unsure as to whether they would take it.

This, despite the scientific evidence of the public health benefits that vaccines have brought over the past century and the clear need to have something to stop Covid-19.

Instead, a combination of the ill-informed and badly-motivated – to use polite terms – have used the power of social media to undermine the public trust in the medical miracles of vaccination. Irresponsible social media platforms – with Facebook the worst offender as usual – have allowed pages that publish a series of lies that do not bear repeating, but which get traction.

To make space for the Covid-19 tracking app on your phone it might be a good idea to delete the Facebook one.