Apple on Tuesday released iOS 13.7, including support for a brand-new direct exposure notice system for powering COVID-19 tracking. The system is an extension of the existing coronavirus contact tracing efforts, but it eliminates the problem on states of needing to develop a devoted app. News of the new software framework was initially announced earlier today in a joint declaration from Apple and Google.
This native support was expected, as it was announced when the exposure alert API– established collaboratively between Apple and Google– was exposed in April At the time, we didn’t understand precisely when it would show up.
Here’s how it will work, from The Verge‘s report on the announcement:
Once the setup is total, iOS and Android can immediately generate the required software, although the two operating systems handle the job differently. In Android, the setup file will immediately produce a customized Android app, while iOS will integrate the settings into its OS-level contact system.
More broadly, the OS-powered contact tracing system is created to notify somebody when they might have been in contact with another person later detected with COVID-19, mainly through a complex BLE Beacon protocol Assistance for the procedure was first contributed to iOS in May with the release of iOS 13.5 At the time, any offered state needed to have an app developed by a public health company that utilized the API. Now, though, states can simply provide Apple and Google with the essential details and the auto-generated software application framework will take care of the rest.
Apple and Google made certain to clarify that existing apps, of which there are 6, will continue to work, and assistance for interoperability between states is developed into the new framework to permit contact tracing state lines. The first authorities app supporting the direct exposure notification system debuted in Virginia previously in August The University of Alabama at Birmingham launched a closed pilot for a direct exposure notification app last month as well
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Image: Apple
” As the next step in our work with public health authorities on Exposure Alerts, we are making it simpler and faster for them to use the Direct exposure Alerts System without the need for them to develop and maintain an app,” Apple and Google stated in a joint statement today. “Exposure Notifications Express supplies another alternative for public health authorities to supplement their existing contact tracing operations with technology without compromising on the task’s core tenets of user personal privacy and security.
iOS 13.7 is readily available to download now.
