This story was last updated Oct. 20 at 2:29 p.m.
The District’s COVID-19 exposure notification tool will launch this week, the city announced Monday.
Starting Tuesday, iPhone and Android users will begin receiving push notifications asking them to opt into exposure notifications via D.C. COVID Alert Notice, or D.C. CAN.
The tool allows iPhone users with iOS version 13.7 or later to opt into the system through their settings without downloading an app, and taken through an on-boarding process. Android users will have to download the D.C. CAN app, and go through through the on-boarding process there.
Like Virginia’s COVIDWISE app, the system uses Bluetooth signals to track if smartphone users are in close proximity. Once enabled, devices will regularly send out a beacon through Bluetooth, which includes a “privacy-preserving random Bluetooth key,” according to D.C. Health director Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt.
Nearby phones that are enabled will send their own beacons, and each phone will securely store the beacons it receives.
When someone tests positive for COVID-19 in D.C., and the city’s Contact Trace Force reaches out, a contact tracer will ask whether that person uses D.C. CAN. If so, they will be given a code they can enter into the system.
The exposure notification system will download a list of keys once a day belonging to people who have tested positive for COVID-19 and reported their diagnosis through D.C. CAN. Users’ phones will check those keys against previously stored information and, if there is a match, they will be notified that they have been exposed to a person who tested positive for COVID-19. Once they have been notified, users will also receive information from D.C. Health about next steps.
Nesbitt emphasized that user privacy was a top concern while developing the tool, which was made through a collaboration between Apple and Google. She added that the system is not a GPS tracker and does not share location. People who test positive are not identified through the system to other users or to Apple or Google.
“This is all voluntary,” Nesbitt said during a Monday news briefing. “You’ll always be in control of your information, and the D.C. Contract Trace Force will be there to guide you through the process.”
Nesbitt said, however, the tool will only be useful if there is widespread participation. “So, we need as many people as possible to opt in beginning tomorrow, and if you have an Android, download the D.C. CAN app.”
D.C. will provide a list of states that are already interoperable with its tool, though that list will not yet include Maryland or Virginia, Nesbitt said. Maryland does not yet have an exposure notification tool, though the city is “optimistic that [Maryland] will adopt a tool that is interoperable,” she added.
Virginia’s app is also not yet interoperable, per Nesbitt, but she said “there are solutions that can be developed” to make the tools work together. Maryland’s Department of Information Technology did not immediately respond to DCist’s request for comment on a timeline for a similar tool.
A Virginia health department official told DCist in an email Monday that the commonwealth aims to migrate from its own server to a national one that is used by D.C. and other jurisdictions around mid-November.
Jeff Stover, Executive Advisor to the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Health said when that migration happens, residents in both D.C. and Virginia will be able to receive exposure notifications across jurisdictions “depending on their specific notification criteria.”
This story was updated to include a comment from the Virginia Department of Health and to add information about iPhone requirements for using the tool.
