Google and Apple have taken an approach for contact tracing and have come up with a design for smartphone technology to be able to trace the infections, which has earned support from countries such as Austria and Switzerland over an alternative German-led approach.

After the attempts to slow the spread of the virus down by imposing lockdown, that is economically disrupting, the governments believe that the contact tracing app can act as a tool to be able to respond fast to newer outbreaks of coronavirus.

Switzerland commented that it will be launching an app by May 11, which is based on the standards all made by the researchers in Lausanne and Zurich, which uses Bluetooth communication in different devices to gauge the risk of catching coronavirus.

Austria and Switzerland have shown support for the design called Decentralized Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (DP-T3). Both countries believe that it provides excellent privacy protection as the sensitive and personal data is usually kept on the devices and not the central server.

The Pan-European Privacy-preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) made by Germany had to face major criticism through an open letter signed by nearly 300 scientists. The criticism was regarding the approach which will be letting an unparalleled surveillance of the society at large.  

Over 400,000 people in Austria have downloaded the Stopp Corona app by Red Cross. The developers in Austria have been upgrading the design as well as architecture after they were given a review by the privacy experts.

Max Schrems, a privacy campaigner had provided feedback for the app made by Red Cross and stated if the Austrian Red Cross changes into a standard such as DP-3T, this will help the app to be used across different countries.

The national apps are required to ‘talk’ to each other through the borders for further helping reduce the risks for contagion that would increase once the travel restrictions are lifted. 

Source Credit -https://www.itnews.com.au/news/switzerland-austria-align-with-google-and-apples-contact-tracing-approach-54708