Mobile tracing: "AllAntiCovid" outperforms StopCovid with 3 million downloads in just a few weeks

After the failure of the first StopCovid mobile tracking software, the French government initiated new applications known to the name "AllAntiCovid".

This article will also interest you: The errors that led to the StopCovid application in France

It was presented on October 20 in Rennes. Unlike the previous one which has only 2.7 million downloads in almost 5 months, the news still seems with the aspirations of the French. Already assume that the position of these opposites to deployments of mobile tracing applications has evolved since then. It should also be remembered that a second phase of mass contamination with coronavirus is being addressed. For this reason, as less than 8 days ago, the new mobile tracking application designed to monitor interactions and determine the extent of contamination has been downloaded nearly 3 million times. A great success at the moment.

The time it was launched precisely on June 2. Here we are talking about StopCovid, the first version of the French mobile tracking application. Faced with several difficulties, the initiators had to consider an overhaul of the computer program. To tell the truth, the first attempt was not unanimous and apparently did not interest the French as a whole. But since then, it seems that the data have changed, especially with the new wave of contamination with covid-19 and their containment that is finally announced again in France. Speech of President Emmanuel Macron last Wednesday, officially confining for 4 weeks at least: "We must collectively deploy much more massively the application TousAntiCovid which will be an instrument of the exit of this phase of containment. ». 

For his part, the Secretary of State for Government Digital but it is Cédric O wrote: "For those who continue to work, to successfully get out of confinement and reopen bars and restaurants… by controlling the spread of the virus, we need to be even more numerous. ».

It is then assumed that the various calls of the government to take new application as a suitable solution on the part of the population was heard. We remember that during the month of August, the specialist of infections at the Bichat hospital in Paris, Dr. Xavier Lescure highlighted the need for the deployment of a mobile tracing application and especially its improvement given the situation: "Only digital solutions can be effective at this stage" said the specialist at the time.

Last Friday, more than 2,289 people were registered by the app as contact cases while 24,307 people were reported as non-positive to coronavirus. These are the numbers of the moment and encouraging, it must be admitted.

Despite the relative success of the new application, it should be mentioned that the number of downloads is far behind that used in the UK or even Germany. Another issue raised by the Directorate General of Health. The number of people uninstalling the app after installing it is nearly 1.3 million. This significantly reduces the number of active users to about 4.4 million users at the moment. Compared to the German or British example, the gap is clearly huge, especially for applications that have been downloaded by about 15 to 20 million people.

"There is a clear desire to play on the ambiguity of the new name. AllAntiCovid is, according to him, only a "minor update of StopCovid" considers Baptiste Robert, a computer security professional, one of the first opponents of the mobile tracking application in its early days. "The change of name, logo and the addition of different statistics mean that there has been a jump in downloads, but the numbers are still relatively low" notes the expert

In a sense, you have to take into the point of the effort made and the designers of the application. In particular the exchange of anonymous identifiers through Bluetooth technology. A technology that hasn't really generated enough confidence to download much more than that. But beyond that, does necessity not require to ignore certain mistrusts.

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