Be useless because of the abandonment of PCR tests of the provinces, the pan-Canadian COVID Alert application will soon be disconnected. The announcement is expected to take place this week.
The news, first announced daily The Globe and Mailwas confirmed in Radio-Canada’s parliamentary office by government sources.
The government has long considered disabling the app. This will finally be done during the summer.
The free application was launched in the summer of 2020, in the early months of the pandemic, with the goal of quickly notifying Canadians of imminent contact (less than two meters in more than 15 minutes) with an infected person. of coronavirus. .
But since its launch, COVID Alert has been criticized as ineffective.
For the app to work, users have received a positive test result PCR In particular, it is necessary to enter a single used key provided by the provincial authorities at the time of diagnosis. However, residents of British Columbia, Alberta, Yukon and Nunavut never got this key.
Moreover, the tests PCR was further pushed alongside other provinces in favor of rapid testing when the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spread nationwide last December.
Ultimately, only 6.89 million people installed the application on February 1, 2022, or less than 20% of Canada’s population.
Since its launch, only 57,704 keys have been used. However, Canada has recorded 3.87 million COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began. More than 41,000 people died.
The COVID Alert app was valued at $ 20 million, most of which – $ 15.9 million – was spent on promotion and advertising. Ottawa spent $ 3.5 million on developing and maintaining the app.
With information from Christian Noël, CBC and The Canadian Press
Radio Canada
Source: Radio-Canada
