Apple and Google have begun testing their COVID-19 exposure notification API

Apple and Google’s joint effort to help public health authorities track the spread of COVID-19 began testing last week. When the companies announced their collaboration earlier this month, the rare joint venture made people instantly stand up and take notice.  The two tech giants will deliver an initial version of their exposure notification API to a small number of developers working on apps for public health organizations and test it over the next several weeks, and the API is expected to be released more broadly in mid-May.

How it works:  the tracing project, which users will be asked to opt into, will use Bluetooth to track potential exposures to confirmed cases of COVID-19. Smartphones will record instances in which they have been close to other phones for an extended period of time without recording location data. When a person is diagnosed with COVID-19, the API will allow public health agencies to quickly inform other people who may have been in contact with the patient, based on the data stored on their phone. Information about patients’ identities or locations is not shared with Apple or Google. Public health authorities will have control over what they consider a likely exposure, using the API to account for the approximate distance the phones were from one another and how long they spent in proximity. Both are calculated on users’ phones and not shared with the companies.

Apple is releasing a beta version of Xcode 11.5 and the third beta of iOS 13.5 today. The former includes developer tools for building iOS apps that incorporate the API, and the latter includes the code needed to run the future apps from public health authorities. Google has released similar updates through Google Play Services and Android Developer Studio. Apple and Google will release sample code on Friday that’s intended to show developers how to build apps using the system, they said. In the second phase of the project, expected within the coming months, exposure notification will be built directly into iOS and Android.

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