Residents of the Twente region who are interested in testing the corona app can register for it from the beginning of July. After the regional test, the research will be repeated on a national scale to get a more reliable picture of the results, coordinator Wolfgang Ebbers told NU.nl on Thursday. The participants of that national test cannot register for this.
Minister Hugo de Jonge (Public Health) announced on Thursday that the app will be tested in the Twente region from 1 July. The ministry wants to use the trial to find out how ‘real’ users react to the app.
The first trials with a specific group of invited citizens will start on Monday. “Can people use it? What do young and old think of this app?”, Lisette van Gemert sketched some questions that the research must answer on Thursday during the presentation of the plans at the University of Twente.
The professor conducts these so-called lab tests, which aim to find out how different groups of citizens – such as young people, the elderly or people with disabilities – respond to the app, including with a fake warning. “Would they install and use it? Why not, for example?”
After that, the field tests will be led by Ebbers. Because it is not yet certain when the lab tests will be finished, it is not yet certain when exactly people from Twente can register. It is also yet to be determined where exactly they should knock. In total there is room for about a thousand interested people.
Because these people register themselves and therefore take a certain amount of bias and knowledge with them, a national test is then carried out to compare the results, says Ebbers. People who participate in this will be approached later via a panel agency, he says.
The researchers’ aim is to provide the first results to the Ministry of Health in mid-July. Minister De Jonge said on Wednesday at the press conference about the easings from July 1 that he wants to make a decision about the follow-up to the corona app in the middle of that month.
App must warn unknown contacts about possible contamination
Ultimately, the corona app must be an addition to the work of the GGD. In the daily work of the GGD people with whom the coronavirus has been diagnosed are asked with whom they have had contact recently. These people are then warned that they may have been at risk.
“What we hope is that this app is additional to the contact survey,” said Samantha Dinsbach of the GGD Twente. “Very often people know this well, but there are also situations in which people do not know.” The app should warn this group of unknown contacts if they may have been at risk of having the coronavirus transmitted to them.
No tests are yet taking place in Twente to show whether the app is actually useful for detecting new COVID-19 infections in these unknown contacts. That research will only take place when the app becomes widely available for the first time.
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