Tech Support: Smartphone contact tracing explained

Yahoo Finance’s Tech Editor Dan Howley addresses how local governments are collaborating with tech companies in order to track the spread of COVID-19.

Video Transcript

ADAM SHAPIRO: I want to talk a little bit of tech right here and tech support with Dan Howley. We want to hit this issue of contact tracing because different companies are working on this, and what, one, does it really mean, and how crucial is it to reopening cities? Dan, have we got you?

DAN HOWLEY: Sorry about that. A little mute issue. So yeah, as you said, as cities and countries around the world look to open up, they're looking at something called smartphone contact tracing. But before we get into that, let's talk about what regular contact tracing is, and that's really where health authorities interview people who are infected with viruses like the coronavirus to see who they've been in contact with and where they've been so that they can then alert those other people and try and get them to stay indoors. And that, they hope, stops the spread of the virus.

But to do that, it requires a lot of manpower. According to the "New York Times," to do that in the US, it would require 300,000 health-care workers to do that. And that's where Apple and Google's Bluetooth solution comes in. The idea is to allow the smartphones that we have in our pockets to voluntarily communicate with each other and let us know if we've been in contact with someone with coronavirus.

Now it'll work by having us download an app from our local health authority. That could be your local or state health department. And eventually Apple and Google will release an operating-system update so that you won't even need that app.

So what happens when you're infected? Well, you use something called a Bluetooth tracking identifier, tracing identifier, and you have those assigned to you at random. And they change every 10 to 20 minutes. So this way it preserves privacy. If you are infected with coronavirus, you would update your status in your health-care authority's app, and then that would then send out any identifiers that you have to a server where they're stored.

Now if you and I come into contact, our devices would exchange those numbers and then save on your own device. And when I then use my phone, I would download the numbers that were updated to the server and then on my device go back and forth and check if the numbers on the server from an infected person match the numbers that I exchanged with someone in real life to see if we actually came in contact and then let me know that I was in contact with an infected person.

This is all voluntary. You don't have to do it. And according to Apple and Google, they will turn off the service once they no longer need it.

The first update is coming as an API in May. That basically means they'll allow the health authorities to develop their own apps. And then later that software update through the operating system will come, and that will allow you to not have to use the apps and basically communicate with people via smartphone to determine if you've been in contact with them, no problem, without the app.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Dan Howley, thank you very much.