The weekend after its launch, the ABTraceTogether app has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. “The better we get at testing and tracing — and the app is an integral part of that — the less social distancing we need to do,” said Dr.
Jia Hu, a medical officer of health for Alberta Health Services. Using Bluetooth, the app builds a record of other app-enabled smartphones it’s been in close contact with (within two metres for a cumulative 15 minutes).
The encrypted information is held on the phone for 21 days. If a user tests positive, they can consent to uploading that record to AHS for human contact tracers to reach out to other users with phone numbers the users registered the app with.