Authorities call on all residents in Portugal to use the “Stayaway covid” app when it is ready – but they do not say when – News

The day after the promulgation of the presidential diploma establishing the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) as responsible for data processing and regulating the intervention of doctors in the Covid ‘Stayaway system, these were the highlights of the usual DGS press conference.

Stayaway Covid:

• Luís Goes Pinheiro, president of the Shared Services of the Ministry of Health, left an appeal not only to the Portuguese, but to “all residents in Portugal”, to download the “stayaway covid” app when it is available.

• It should be remembered that ‘Stayaway covid’ is a voluntary application that, through the physical proximity between ‘smartphones’, allows the anonymous tracking of contagion networks by covid-19, informing users that they have been, in the last 14 days, in the same space as someone infected with the new coronavirus.

• “It is essential that they download the application, keep it connected, that they use it in their day-to-day lives and that, if covid-19 is diagnosed following a test performed for that purpose, ask the doctor to provide the code to insert in the application “, said the official, stressing that” the insertion of this code is voluntary on the part of those who use the application “.

• The app will then communicate the diagnosis to all those who have had close contact, this being stipulated as being less than 2 meters for more than 15 minutes with the infected person.

• Regarding the time interval, Luís Goes Pinheiro specified that the application “will inform the contacts of someone who was diagnosed with covid-19 in the 48 hours prior to the first symptoms or, if he is asymptomatic, it will be in the 48 hours before the test, ”he said.

• At the moment, the application is only available in a pilot project with close to 1000 people for the Android operating system, with iOS – used by Apple mobile phones – for now, from outside. “It is essential that the pilot also runs on Apple phones,” said the person in charge of SPMS, as only then will there be conditions to make the app available to all residents. The technological giant, according to Luís Goes Pinheiro, has already given the OK but it is not yet known what the time horizon is to start being tested, with confirmation “for days”.

• The person responsible for the SPMS again defended that the “stayaway covid” respects the privacy of users and that “information about those contacts will only be kept for only 14 days, since after that period it will be deleted to guarantee maximum secrecy”.

• Data protection, he says, was the result of “proximity work” by the Institute of Systems and Computers Engineering, Technology and Science with the National Data Protection Commission to “ensure that this app preserves the secrets of the users to the maximum. use “.

• The president of the SPMS also stressed that this application will be “another instrument put at the service of the fight against the pandemic”, not representing “great revolution” in the efforts against the covid, but rather being “an aid”, pointing also to the popularity of tools similar in countries like Germany – with 16 million users – as well as Ireland – used by 30% of the population.

July was the month with the most tests since the pandemic began:

• Before calling for the future use of the “stayaway covid”, Secretary of State for Health, Jamila Madeira, spoke of the near past, noting that “June was the month with the highest number of tests carried out since the beginning of the pandemic”, with 431,178 tests .

• This number of tests means a daily average of 13,999 tests, the highest carried out to date, guaranteed the official.

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