Nova Scotia’s Division of Well being and Wellness has introduced by way of Twitter (@nshealth) that the federal authorities’s COVID Alert app is now accessible within the province.
The information comes nearly two weeks after the federal authorities introduced COVID Alert would become available both in Nova Scotia and P.E.I. The app became available in P.E.I. on October 8th.
In a sequence of tweets, the Well being and Wellness account outlined the fundamentals of how COVID Alert works, the way it protects customers’ privateness and linked to the Nova Scotia website so folks might be taught extra concerning the app.
COVID Alert is offered totally free on the Play Store for Android and App Store for iOS. It operates on Google and Apple’s Exposure Notification system, which makes use of Bluetooth to detect close by smartphones additionally operating the app. In brief, COVID Alert will commerce nameless, distinctive codes with close by gadgets that signify potential exposures. Particulars like sign power and size of time can be utilized to estimate the danger of publicity. The codes don’t include any private information or any figuring out data that would reveal who you’re.
Nova Scotians will have the ability to obtain #COVID19 publicity alerts on to their smartphones when utilizing Well being Canada’s free COVID Alert App, accessible on the Apple or Google Play app shops. You too can obtain it at https://t.co/nY74BH394a. pic.twitter.com/WwOYl3JMOR
— Well being & Wellness (@nshealth) October 15, 2020
Every smartphone retains an area record of those nameless codes as a document of potential exposures. When somebody assessments optimistic for COVID-19, they are going to obtain a one-time verification key from public well being authorities of their province. They will then enter that code into COVID Alert, which permits them to add their cellphone’s native document of potential exposures. Different smartphones can then test that record for matching codes. A match signifies potential publicity to COVID-19 and can trigger the app to alert customers.
Nova Scotia joins different provinces, together with Manitoba, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Quebec in supporting the COVID Alert app. Additional, the app has passed 4.3 million downloads. Simply 5 days in the past, COVID Alert was at 4 million downloads.
