Unusable data made Coronamelder’s initial investigation fail

The first investigation into Coronamelder in the east of the Netherlands did not yield any useful results, because the collected data says too little. That says the Ministry of Health.

The trial should have shown whether the Coronamelder app has an effect and, if so, how much. A notification in the app could people get tested without complaints between August 17 and September 12, but that period has been too short, Ron Rozendaal says the Ministry against NU.nl . In addition, people in the test area received too few reports and therefore requested too few tests.

In Coronamelder, people are notified if their phone has been within five feet of another phone owned by someone who later tested positive for 15 minutes. The app works with bluetooth and does not store any data except anonymous keys from other devices. Based on this, the app can find out whether someone should receive a notification.

Due to the failure of the test, it is not possible to determine how well the app works. Coronamelder has been active throughout the Netherlands since last week. However, testing is only possible with complaints, although the GGD will ask when requesting the test whether someone has had a report in the app.