App close contact questions

Yeah, I was all for its use at the start but they haven’t really followed up on it so it’s best gone for now.

plodder

When I had a positive test in October, a few days after the notification I got the contact tracing calls where they provided the code to upload the covid contacts from the app. There was no need for that (approx) two day delay in my opinion. I got the impression they wanted to slow down the app to the same speed that the human tracers were working at. And because that is a time-consuming manual process it can easily get overloaded if numbers go up suddenly (as they have multiple times).

So, I don't think they ever got the best out of the app. If they sent you the code for uploading the codes, as part of the positive test notification, the app could continue working no matter how "exponential" the growth in cases is.

fly_agaric

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

No. They’ve stopped contract tracing so it’s of zero use aside from letting you know the number of infectious etc.

All it serves to do now is drain phone batteries. Maybe it will be useful again in a couple of months when things calm down a bit.

Think they should still be getting positive cases to upload ids even if they cannot test the "contacts" that get notified via the app...that will cause more phone calls/contacts for them of course.

Don't think about the application much but would open it the odd time to check the statistics stuff that is included in it.

Had a look and it is using 0.4 % of my battery on Android, and Google Play Services (which I think includes the Exposure Notification Service) uses about 1.5 % so it is minimal really.

Sleeper12

The were definitely using the app for contact tracing up to early December. I have a feeling that the system is so overwhelmed now that it is not being used right now. They can't even approve all of the positive cases let alone trace their contacts.

Government should hang its head in shame "opening the country" to give us a Christmas (vote buying), at a time when we socialise the most. At the same time they haven't ramped up contact tracing since last May.

Back to the app, just look at how few people even check in anymore.

Beasty

Threads merged

touts

Away With The Fairies wrote: »

What was the point in this app? Surely it was meant to get people to isolate and prevent further spread? Another failure with all this. It should have been mandatory. But I guess that's too much trouble for people to be told to isolate.

I got a close contact alert on it a few months ago. Was told to self isolate and the contact tracing team would phone me within 24 hours to arrange a test. Nearly died when the red alert popped up on my phone. I immediately went home and self isolated. Waited 24 hours. No call. Phoned the help line which said to just keep waiting. Waited 48 hours. No call. Phoned the HSE and told to keep waiting. Waited 5 days. No call. Phoned the HSE again. The person said "If you have symptoms ask your GP to arrange a test otherwise keep waiting and someone would phone me within 24 hours". On Day 7 I phoned my GP. She said they were getting lots of calls like this. The app wasn't working. She knew no one who had actually been phoned. She booked an appointment for me the following day. Came back negative thankfully. 3 months later still no call from Contact Tracing.

In my opinion the app is a sham. It says that over 16k people "Received a close contact alert". But it pointedly does not say how many, if any, of those were actually contacted. My bet is close to zero. It was rushed out in the early days to make people feel that the government was actually doing something to protect them. But it is basically useless. You might as well wear a miraculous medal around your neck. It was and still is simply about making people feel better because they think they have done something to protect themselves.

Of course the people who feel a lot better are the people who designed it for €1 million + if I recall correctly. I'd imagine this will be something that will come under intense scrutiny when we get through the crisis and people start investigating what happened. Would love to see Simon Donnelly answer a Daily question about this if anyone knows a TD.

plodder

touts wrote: »

I got a close contact alert on it a few months ago. Was told to self isolate and the contact tracing team would phone me within 24 hours to arrange a test. Nearly died when the red alert popped up on my phone. I immediately went home and self isolated. Waited 24 hours. No call. Phoned the help line which said to just keep waiting. Waited 48 hours. No call. Phoned the HSE and told to keep waiting. Waited 5 days. No call. Phoned the HSE again. The person said "If you have symptoms ask your GP to arrange a test otherwise keep waiting and someone would phone me within 24 hours". On Day 7 I phoned my GP. She said they were getting lots of calls like this. The app wasn't working. She knew no one who had actually been phoned. She booked an appointment for me the following day. Came back negative thankfully. 3 months later still no call from Contact Tracing.

In my opinion the app is a sham. It says that over 16k people "Received a close contact alert". But it pointedly does not say how many, if any, of those were actually contacted. My bet is close to zero. It was rushed out in the early days to make people feel that the government was actually doing something to protect them. But it is basically useless. You might as well wear a miraculous medal around your neck. It was and still is simply about making people feel better because they think they have done something to protect themselves.

Of course the people who feel a lot better are the people who designed it for €1 million + if I recall correctly. I'd imagine this will be something that will come under intense scrutiny when we get through the crisis and people start investigating what happened. Would love to see Simon Donnelly answer a Daily question about this if anyone knows a TD.

I see where you are coming from, but I think the system at least partly worked in your case and that was down to the app. You got a close contact notification, so you knew you had to self isolate.

Personally, I think the app should be completely automated and only partly linked to the manual tracing system. As soon as you get a close contact notification you should be sent a link to schedule a test for yourself, and as soon as you get a positive test result, you should get the code to upload your own app information. All that could be done completely automatically and independent of the tracing team imo.

For what it's worth, I think they did manage to phone the majority of people but there was delays that cost time, and which could have been avoided with a more automated system imo.

Irishphotodesk

Sleeper12 wrote: »

The were definitely using the app for contact tracing up to early December. I have a feeling that the system is so overwhelmed now that it is not being used right now. They can't even approve all of the positive cases let alone trace their contacts.

Government should hang its head in shame "opening the country" to give us a Christmas (vote buying), at a time when we socialise the most. At the same time they haven't ramped up contact tracing since last May.

Back to the app, just look at how few people even check in anymore.

seriously ???
- just because thew government said you can do something doesn't mean you should, people need to take responsibility for their own actions - the people that are to blame are the people who actively went out and met with people outside of their own home, those that travelled and had family dinners, those that celebrated with friends.....they are to blame !!

personal responsibility needs to be done by the people - how can people blame the government when the virus is being spread by the people.

I can count on a single hand the amount of people I have been in contact with since early november - we had covid in the house and the whole house isolated for the month of November, so we "should" have had some sort of immunity over christmas - but we didn't meet family/friends to protect them, we had christmas at our own home and family/friends were seen through a computer screen, its been that way since March.

As for the app - I never got it as I don't think our government is capable of getting something like this done correctly, there's too much protocol and red-tape required and the civil liberties groups would be afraid of the possible mis-use of data (probably rightly) - when my wife got her positive result, she had 2 close contacts in the two weeks prior to her result, one was the GP (because she and the kids got the flu-jab), the other was a neighbour who she went for a socially distant walk with 2 days before any signs of a head-cold (she had a headcold for a few days before sense of smell/taste went - we called doc and doc arranged for covid test).

I do have a problem with nphet asking close contacts not to go for a test - this is going to artificially deflate the numbers - if any of them are positive (asymptomatic or otherwise) they will not be counted as a covid positive case - thus making the numbers artificially lower.

Sleeper12

Irishphotodesk wrote: »

seriously ???
- just because thew government said you can do something doesn't mean you should, people need to take responsibility for their own actions - the people that are to blame are the people who actively went out and met with people outside of their own home, those that travelled and had family dinners, those that celebrated with friends.....they are to blame !!

personal responsibility needs to be done by the people - how can people blame the government when the virus is being spread by the people.

I can count on a single hand the amount of people I have been in contact with since early november - we had covid in the house and the whole house isolated for the month of November, so we "should" have had some sort of immunity over christmas - but we didn't meet family/friends to protect them, we had christmas at our own home and family/friends were seen through a computer screen, its been that way since March.

I didn't do anything. I took no risks. I'm autistic & don't like crowds or mixing with people. Government shouldn't have opened the country coming up to Christmas & the pups serving food should never been allowed to open. Some idiots haven't a clue what social distancing is or couldn't care. While I took personal responsibility these idiots spread the virus & this spreading was encouraged by our government & I hold the 3 parties responsible for this.


Every other country was closing up shop over the Christmas. We were one of the only ones opening up at the time of year when people mix the most.

Irishphotodesk

Sleeper12 wrote: »

I didn't do anything. I took no risks. I'm autistic & don't like crowds or mixing with people. Government shouldn't have opened the country coming up to Christmas & the pups serving food should never been allowed to open. Some idiots haven't a clue what social distancing is or couldn't care. While I took personal responsibility these idiots spread the virus & this spreading was encouraged by our government & I hold the 3 parties responsible for this.


Every other country was closing up shop over the Christmas. We were one of the only ones opening up at the time of year when people mix the most.

good for you - hope you stay safe and remain covid-free.

The government tried to educate people and minimise the risks - if they said no movement anywhere - people would have gone out of their way to meet up with friends/family, as you have said people were going to meet up anyway !!

unfortunately - the message is mixed and people either choose to ignore or made their own decision to get close to family/friends.

I think the government needs to be clear on policy and clear on rules/transmission etc - the problem is in Ireland the law is often open to interpretation and legals can always find a loophole in ireland....its a joke.

as an example (if my memory is correct) a romanian national was not given drink driving results in irish and as such he was spared a criminal conviction for alleged drink driving (only a legal could argue this as being correct/fair).

we have recommendations while other countries have laws , we are afraid or unable to change the laws because we know they can and will be challenged and those that are creating the rules/regulations simply take into consideration the effect the rules will have on the virus, not the effect it will have on a persons mental capacity or financial situation.

glack

Lots of “the app doesn’t work posts” so thought I’d share an alternative story.

Family member got an alert - within a couple of hours got a call from contact tracing. This was in October so they weren’t so overwhelmed.

She went home from work immediately after getting alert and restricted her movements. Tested following day and tested positive. Immediately self isolated in her bedroom and none of her family caught it - they restricted their movements for 14 days but no interaction between her and the rest of the family.

It was 7 days later before she had symptoms. Imagine how many people could have caught it from her?? Her 4 household contacts all would have a large number of close contacts (schools and nature of her husbands job) so it could have been passed on to a large number.

No one she was in contact with ever rang or text her to tell her they had tested positive. Only people she had been in contact with were clients at work - all while wearing masks!! And her family who clearly aren’t the reason she got the app alert.

Sleeper12

Irishphotodesk wrote:

The government tried to educate people and minimise the risks - if they said no movement anywhere - people would have gone out of their way to meet up with friends/family, as you have said people were going to meet up anyway !!

They do this with drugs too. They educate us from childhood but they still ban them.
Education is wonderful BUT they should have followed the advice given by their paid experts. They didn't & they failed the country.

Why bother with drink driving check points or speed vans? What about personal responsibility? We have these to protect the rest of the population.

It's a very hollow victory saying that its personal responsibility while at the same time we will have 8000 cases per day in a few days. The governments job is to protect us from the people who don't care about personal responsibility.

This surge lies at the feet of the government.

fly_agaric

glack wrote: »

Lots of “the app doesn’t work posts” so thought I’d share an alternative story.

Yes, the anecdotes imply some problems in systems around it (follow up call delays, people with a positive test not being given the code to upload ids) rather than "the app doesn’t work".

With the user base HSE states, with 2 random adults, I'd estimate there is only about a 13 % probability* that a positive case and a contact both have it installed so it is not exactly going to solve all their contact tracing problems. Better than not having it at all though.

Whatever about not being able to test the contacts identified through the application any more due to the increase in cases, they should be ensuring that application users who test positive can upload the ids afterwards. Not being able to test the contacts is bad, but not ensuring ids get uploaded after a positive test is much worse.

*Ireland's estimated population is 4.9 million.
Adult (18+) population from Census 2016 is 3.57 million (3.57/4.76 million = 0.75)
Very rough estimate of current adult population using that is 3.67 million
App user base 1.3 million
So assuming these are mostly adults ~ 35.4 % of adults have it installed.

Logo

I logged onto the COVID tracker around 7pm this evening and 11:30pm tonight and was informed on both occasions of 4962 cases and 7 deaths on 3rd Jan. Yet I was informed online (independent.ie) of 6110 cases and 6 deaths at approx 7.30pm for 4th Jan this evening. It's difficult to have confidence in the tracker - is it keeping up with real-time information?

Beasty

Threads merged

Thoie

Logo wrote: »

I logged onto the COVID tracker around 7pm this evening and 11:30pm tonight and was informed on both occasions of 4962 cases and 7 deaths on 3rd Jan. Yet I was informed online (independent.ie) of 6110 cases and 6 deaths at approx 7.30pm for 4th Jan this evening. It's difficult to have confidence in the tracker - is it keeping up with real-time information?

It's a day behind. It gives the date on the cases box. Today, Jan 5th at 11am, it's saying "4th January 6,110 cases, 6 deaths". I'm not sure at what time exactly it updates, but it updates overnight, so you're always looking at yesterday's final figures.

The figures/graphs it gives are for general information only. It's primary purpose is for monitoring "contacts". It doesn't need to keep up with real-time information (that would just hog data and battery more).

oneweb

schmoo2k wrote: »

In our household we have had 3 positive (and 1 negative) test results since Christmas.

For each of the 3 positives not a single request was made to upload the data from the Covid app (I think they provide a number you enter into the App)?

Or do I have that wrong, can they infer it from the mobile number given for the test?

IMO it is a real shame after all the development work and advertising that went into it...

(None of them thought to mention it when rang which is understandable IMO).

Saw an ad on Virgin One for the Covid App this evening so they're still pushing for it to be used at least.

Vic987

Apologies if this has been covered before.

I have just been contacted to say I was a close contact of somebody who tested positive. The contact was outside at a football match and we were not physically close (standing together during match), no masks. So, I have to get a test either today or tomorrow.

However, I recently broke my wrist and I have an appointment at the fracture clinic on Friday. Not a vital hospital visit but something that can't be left either. I need physio on the wrist, possibly assessment and another x-ray.

Anybody else got experience of a similar scenario?

Thoie

Vic987 wrote: »

Apologies if this has been covered before.

I have just been contacted to say I was a close contact of somebody who tested positive. The contact was outside at a football match and we were not physically close (standing together during match), no masks. So, I have to get a test either today or tomorrow.

However, I recently broke my wrist and I have an appointment at the fracture clinic on Friday. Not a vital hospital visit but something that can't be left either. I need physio on the wrist, possibly assessment and another x-ray.

Anybody else got experience of a similar scenario?

Call the hospital and let them know - any hospital appointment I've had in the last year they've had a questionnaire about contacts/exposure etc. I've always been able to answer no - I'm not sure what will happen if you answer yes.