Japan’s COVID-19 contact tracing app hasn't warned users of encounters with carriers since September 2020
- Reference: 1612501885
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/02/05/japans_covid19_contact_tracing_app/
- Source link:
As Japan has recently experienced a third wave of infections, news of that failure is a significant error and embarrassment.
[1]
The Ministry admitted to the problems in a Thursday update to the app’s [2]web page .
The Ministry’s account of the situation, which The Register has translated using online services, says: “From the end of September, it has become clear that notifications of contact with app users have not arrived for Android users.”
[3]
“We deeply apologize for damaging the trust of many people who use this app. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare will work to eliminate obstacles by mid-February and will thoroughly control quality. We will continue to make every effort to ensure that the people can use this app with peace of mind.”
We got it! Japanese space agency confirms its probe has Ryugu asteroid samples [4]READ MORE
The app’s Google Play [5]page says it was last updated on December 14th, 2020. It also reveals that users think it’s a dud: the app has a 1.8/5 rating on over 15,800 reviews.
The Play page also reveals the app has been downloaded over five million times, nowhere near enough adoption for it to be a useful contact-tracing tool.
Japanese outlet Nikkei has [6]reported that the app’s flaws were kept secret since September 2020. The organ also reports several other health system failures in the face of COVID-19, among them an inability to secure wider take-up of the app.
The Ministry not said how many notifications were missed as a result of the app's problems, but the consequence may well have been deadly.
The [7]World Health Organisation Dashboard for Japan shows that Japan experienced a third wave of COVID-19 infections that started in November 2020. That wave peaked at almost 8,000 infections a day. Japan previously experienced only one day with over 2,000 recorded new infections.
[8]
While the third wave appears to have peaked, 4,254 of Japan’s 6,020 COVID-19 deaths have come since November 2020. Last week’s 635 deaths made it the nation’s worst seven day stretch during the pandemic. ®
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[2] https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/cocoa_00138.html
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/15/jaxa_asteroid_samples/
[5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.go.mhlw.covid19radar
[6] https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Comment/Japan-s-flawed-COVID-19-tracing-app-is-digital-black-eye-for-Tokyo
[7] https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/jp
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Complacency kills: Germany had around 12k deaths in the first wave and the summer was looking good. Now we are at 65k and rapidly growing.
A whole bunch of nations have just the same pattern.
Overcrowded, proud, insular island nation admits error
Whut? No, it was Japan. We Brits wouldn't lose face by admitting to errors!
But seriously, Japanese people in cities are used to wearing face masks against pollution and I think are more likely to follow Government guidelines. Let's hope their good run continues.
Japanese tend to laugh in the face of anything thrown at them eg nukes, tsunami, typhoons, Godzilla etc.
Sociologists refer to cultures such as Japan's as being 'tight' - rule-abiding, culturally homogenous, community focused. Such cultures correlate with - and are suited to dealing - external threats such as likelihood of natural disasters or belligerent neighbours. On the flip side, 'loose' cultures which are more individualistic and diverse can be drivers of economic drivers.
I'm sure the UK would be happy to import and use the same contact tracing app ..... if it meant getting the same infection and death rates!
But that's not gonna happen since we already have a world leading contact tracing app in place!
We have a working tracing app. I took an exam with about 20 students about a week ago. I put a smartphone with running app on a table and suggested students can/should put their phones next to it during exam. Not a single one did.
'World-beating' was the term the UK government used for their mate's tracing app - the one that didn't work. It's a different beast to the one currently deployed, which is built atop a joint Google and Apple effort.
Still, for some reason the current app won't work without 'location' turned on, and since this canes my phone's battery, I usually have location turned off. This is daft, because the core of the Google Apple system is Bluetooth proximity based, generating and storing tokens - location isn't needed for this to work.
can't believe you missed...
app has not informed users of contact with virus carriers since September 2020
did 0
Re: can't believe you missed...
This might be a feature, not a bug.
Take, for example, the possibility that Covid-19 is indeed nothing more than a severe influenza, which is what death numbers suggest. Then all this hysteria is a self-fulfilling prophecy: when every news-network only talks about Covid-19 and death and cases and deaths and Covid-19 and PCR-test and masks and death and ... then people tend to only think about this and actually become sick, not from the virus but from the lack of going out, having fun, doing sports, breathing fresh air, meeting people, moving ...
On the other hand, if you have a tracing app that says: "all fine, nothing to report" then people go on about their normal life and life IS then normal.
And, if anything Japan should know, they had the first cruise ship Diamond Princess with Covid-19 in quarantine in their port, and guess what: hardly anyone died: 3711 passengers, 700 infected, 14 death, which is 0.37%, and that on an elder population.
Yep, influenza. Do we want an influenza tracing app ?
Info request
Is there any proof that contact tracing apps are useful in whatever country they are deployed? Are they a huge waste of resource or are they a true mean to fight the COVID?
Re: Info request
Can't remember reading anything positive about them anywhere.
Except maybe Taiwan, where it was made mandatory and will now become a tool for their local Big Brother. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
Re: Info request
In my experience, having recently had "mild*" Covid-19, logging into the app and updating ones corona-status is about the very last thing one wants to waste any effort on! The energy just isn't there!!
*) The medical defintion of "mild" is different from the common understanding of the word: "Ok, so you have some trouble breathing?, Yes!, "But, can you walk?", what do you mean, walk, "go to the toilet, get some water, can you do that?" Yes, with difficulty. "OK, call us back when you cant!, have a nice day, sir!".
> Is there any proof that contact tracing apps are useful in whatever country they are deployed?
You shouldn't be be looking for 'proof', but for 'evidence that strongly suggests that...'. There are too many variables between countries for proof.
Technology-based contact tracing alone is not a silver bullet, but it can be a very useful part of a wider, coordinated contact tracing effort, an effort that includes more old-scool techniques such as knocking on doors and asking questions. See recent issues of Private Eye for what a balls-up the UKs wider contact tracing effort has been. The issue goes back about a decade and the cut in funding to local health authorities meaning the local knowledge isn't on hand.
Even without an app, mobile phones give good population-level data to epidemiologists and policy makers - such as: How many people flee Paris for the country after restrictions are announced.
Are they supposed to Work?
After she has been shielding for almost a year my wife came with me to be tested, the following day she reported positive I reported negative. Our mobiles had rarely been less than 6 feet apart for months, yet mine failed to register any sign of an issue even after my wife updated her status. It was only AFTER a contact tracer rang an hour or two following her change of status, to trace her contacts that I then received a message on my mobile.
So, contact tracing works, if only to tell me what I knew, but the application did next to nothing. Oh, it does one thing, it falls asleep and has to be reloaded.
6020 covid crisis deaths in a population of 126 million people? This app hardly seems worth the effort.