Covid links du jour
Now that the construction holiday is over, Quebec wants anyone with any doubts about their exposure to get tested for Covid.
Health minister Christian Dubé is promising an updated school policy soon soon.
The WHO is warning us that there may never be an effective vaccine against this thing. Canada has created a tracking and notification app but it isn’t active anywhere but Ontario yet, and if Quebec follows its usual modus operandi, it will insist on building its own from scratch.
Update: There are complaints that the Canada app only works on phones less than five years old. To make the app do what it does, presumably it needs more recent hardware and software hooks – you can’t make older hardware do new tricks by magic.
j2 18:21 on 2020-08-03 Permalink
There was a public consultation by Quebec about the app that ended yesterday.
Kate 20:20 on 2020-08-03 Permalink
Thanks! I wonder when we’ll hear the results.
Mark Côté 21:58 on 2020-08-03 Permalink
Yes, unfortunately Apple and Google haven’t made the necessary functionality available on older phones (not sure if it’s impossible on the hardware or they just didn’t want to put in the extra effort). The app authors had their hands tied there.
Faiz imam 23:59 on 2020-08-03 Permalink
FYI, another requirement set by Apple/Google is that there only be one app per country that uses their technology. They expressly don’t want competing apps.
So Quebec literally cannot build their own. At least not if they want it to actually be effective. The alternative is to have an app that is permanently on screen at all times. That’s the only way for normal apps to have Bluetooth running persistently. An obvious non-starter.
I figure its only a matter of time before Quebec uses the official app. It’s extremely well designed, I’ve actually already downloaded it. There is no serious reason not to.
walkerp 08:36 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
Although I am always suspicious of Apple, there is a very valid reason that the app is designed for newer models. Apple updated their API a few versions ago and made the privacy requirements much stricter, forcing developers to be transparent and conscious about what data their app accesses. This is a crucial requirement for a contact-tracing app in the west.
The consensus among security experts that I follow is that privacy is much stronger in the iOS environment than Android. It always has been, but the new API made that even stronger.
Meezly 09:14 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
The last time there was a public notice urging people to get tested for Covid, there were massive lineups. Has the testing capacity and turn over improved at all since then?
Tim S. 09:31 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
I’m a little curious about the testing plan for the return to school and daycare. Kids get colds, gastros, unexplained pains all the time. Is every kid with a sniffle or headache going to need to get tested? If so, is there some kind of plan for them to be tested in their neighbourhood without having to wait for hours? Because for some families this might become a monthly event.
On the other hand, maybe all the COVID precautions will cut down on all the other germs too.
Kate 10:35 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
Tim S., it’s one of the few silver linings that the precautions will also cut down on flu and cold transmission, yes. But you ask cromulent questions I have not seen answered and which will probably not be tackled till school’s been open for a few weeks.
DeWolf 12:30 on 2020-08-04 Permalink
Meezly, there are indeed new testing facilities and I haven’t noticed any significant lineups at any of the ones I have passed by. That said, I know people who were tested recently (all negative!) and some of them had to wait a full week for their results, even after being told they’d be ready in 1-3 days. So there are still backlogs, just on the back end and not the front.
Dhomas 07:23 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
About the complaints of the tracing app requiring a phone newer than 5 years, the journalist either did no research or is intentionally trying to blame the government for something outside of their control: “Parsons said criticism should be directed at the federal government, not those who designed the app.” If they had done a 30 second Google search, they would have found that the software infrastructure required for this app is Android 6.0 (https://www.google.com/covid19/exposurenotifications/ and https://developers.google.com/android/exposure-notifications/exposure-notifications-api) which was released in 2015 (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_Marshmallow). Also, most Android phones released in 2015 wouldn’t even have shipped with Android 6, as phone hardware manufacturers are notoriously slow at shipping current versions of the OS. Some of those 2015 phones would get an update to Android 6.0, others would not. That said, some even older phones WOULD get an upgrade to Android 6.0, for example the Google Nexus 5, released in 2013, was upgraded to Android 6.0 in 2015. So, there’s a 7 year old phone that would work with the app.
In any case, my point here is that the government could do nothing to just make it work on older software. It was simply outside of their scope.
And as for “you can’t make older hardware do new tricks by magic”, that’s true. But you don’t need magic. A lot of phone manufacturers don’t bother upgrading their OS to get consumers to buy a new model with a new OS capable of new tricks. It is possible and there are some community projects that will allow you to install newer versions of Android even when the manufacturer never provided an update. If you look up the Lineage OS project, you’ll see a number of older phones being upgraded to Android 10, way after their manufacturers wrote them off.
Dhomas 09:20 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
I didn’t mention iPhone/iOS in my post as I’m much more familiar with Android. For iPhone users, it’s much more cut and dry: contact tracing requires iOS 13.5 which is available on the iPhone 6S and newer. iPhone 6S was released in 2015.
Kate 10:01 on 2020-08-05 Permalink
Thanks for the clarifications, Dhomas.