ALABAMA, USA — If you don't already have the GuideSafe Exposure Notification app on your cell phone, health leaders in Alabama want you to download it.
The app is for people in Alabama, and it can prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Since the pandemic started, health leaders and app developers have been working together to create the GuideSafe app to help notify people if they've been exposed to COVID-19 in hopes of limiting the spread of the virus.
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The app was developed in a partnership between Apple, Google, the Alabama Department of Public Health, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and MotionMobs.
It was released in August 2020. Over 93,000 people have already downloaded the app, but the more people that have it, the better it works.
Dr. Karen Landers with the Alabama Department of Public Health said, "We would like for more people to have it on their devices in order to assist in being aware for their own health as well as the opportunity for notification of other people who could have been around them."
If you want to be notified that you have been around someone with a positive COVID-19 test, just download the GuideSafe app from either the Apple App Store or Google Play. Then, enable Bluetooth.
UAB Professor at the School of Health Professionals, Sue Feldman, said, "If we all had the exposure notification app downloaded, then going to a concert or going to the theater, all of those indoor events, all of those would make us feel so much more protected."
If you test positive for COVID-19, you can report it anonymously.
Other people with the app who may have been in close contact with you in the last 14 days will get a notification that they were around someone with a positive test. The person being notified will not know who it is or where they came into contact with that person.
"The only information that the code carries is the date because that's what you are notified of is the date that the contact took place, and it also knows the distance between the two phones, and it knows the time because it has to figure out when it's been 15 minutes or longer," said Feldman.
The app does not help with contact tracing, but it does help people know if they have been exposed to the virus about a week earlier than contact tracers can let them know. This allows people to self isolate sooner.
Right now, the app only works in Alabama. Developers are working to improve the app so that it will work across state lines.
The GuideSafe platform and the set of tools within it was developed by a team of experts at UAB. It was developed by UAB and MotionMobs, a certified woman-owned Birmingham software development and technical consulting firm founded by a UAB alumni in 2010.
For more information, click here.
iPhone users can download the GuideSafe app here.
Android users can download the GuideSafe app here.
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