The RadarCOVID mobile application completes its implementation in thirteen autonomous communities, which cover 70% of the population, and releases its code

In the last week the Community of Madrid, the Valencian Community, Navarra, Asturias and La Rioja have been integrated
The application code has been released so that it is available to the developer community

The RadarCOVID risk contact alert application is now fully operational in thirteen autonomous communities, once the technical process of integration with the health systems of the Community of Madrid, the Valencian Community, Navarra, Asturias and La Rioja has been completed in the last week . In this way, the application is now fully available for almost 70% of the population.

In addition to the five autonomous communities mentioned, the application was already underway in Andalusia, Aragon, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Cantabria, Castilla y León, Extremadura and the Region of Murcia. The application is ready so that the rest of the autonomous communities can also integrate it as soon as the technical works, whose development continues to advance.

The process of technical adaptation of each autonomous community allows health personnel in each region to provide encrypted codes to people diagnosed positive for COVID after a PCR test. This code allows the anonymous notification system to be triggered to the terminals with which the person diagnosed could have a risk contact: being less than two meters away for more than fifteen minutes. In addition, the integration allows each region to display the health care number that its citizens should contact if they receive a notification.

In the absence of this necessary integration, the application has been active and working throughout the national territory since last August. This implies that the terminal already stores the anonymous identifiers of the other terminals with which it has been in contact with risk during the last seven days.

For this reason, and although the technical implementation is in process in some autonomous communities, it is useful to have the application already installed so that this registration process takes place and thus be able to be protected from the first moment it is launched. More than 3.7 million users have already downloaded the application, protecting themselves and those close to them against possible chains of contagion.

Code release

In addition, one of the commitments acquired with the beginning of the development of the application has been fulfilled: the release of its code.

It is an exercise in transparency so that the operation of the application can be audited openly and directly by the public. The goal is that anyone can submit comments and suggestions that help improve this tool.

Open source also allows the internal workings of the application to be publicly displayed so that the public can have full confidence that security and privacy have been the central principles behind the creation of this tool to protect against COVID.

Thus, the latest available version of the application becomes available to the community under the ‘Mozilla Public License 2.0’ license, the same one used by the DP3T project, the protocol that was used during the development of RadarCOVID. Furthermore, successive updates will be published as new versions of the application become available.

Other improvements completed and in progress

With the intention of publicizing the operation of the application and solving doubts and questions that citizens share through social networks, the Secretary of State for Digitization and AI has set up two specific accounts for the application. Thus, from the @AppRadarCOVID account, available on both Twitter and Instagram, specific information will be shared about the news regarding the app and the most frequent questions asked by citizens will be answered.

In the coming days, in addition, other new features will be launched such as the translation of RadarCOVID into other co-official languages as part of the national implementation – it is currently available in Spanish, English and Catalan – or compliance with accessibility standards so that the app is usable for anyone with disabilities.

Links of interest

Download the app: