Crime-tracking app Citizen now alerts users to infection risk

A ‘walk-in’ and ‘drive-through’ coronavirus testing site in Miami Beach, Florida in July. Two key weapons in the state's fight against the corona virus are misfiring badly: testing and contact tracing. — AFP

At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, contact tracing was considered the best hope for getting people back to offices and schools safely without a vaccine. The tech industry was optimistic that apps would provide a faster, more effective alternative to the usual painstaking human process of calling and interviewing the networks of infected people to figure out possible sources of exposure.

It hasn’t worked out that way. All efforts in the United States are so nascent that Citizen, known for location-based crime alerts, on Aug 13 launched a feature called SafePass that it’s already calling the largest private contact-tracing network, with only 700,000 people testing its product.