Apturi Covid
Latvia's official Covid-19 exposure notification app
In spring 2020 a volunteer team of Latvian companies and scientists built Apturi Covid - the first app in the world to go live on the Apple and Google exposure notification framework. MakIT, now Mitigate, developed the iOS app and the admin tool for the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
iOSSwift
About the project
Apturi Covid was Latvia's official Covid-19 contact tracing app, run by the Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (SPKC). Around 100 people from Latvian companies and academia built it in about six weeks, without a cent from the state budget. The app went live on 29 May 2020 and was later handed over to SPKC free of charge.
Our team developed the iOS app and the SPKC admin tool for issuing verification codes to confirmed cases. In autumn 2020 the app was connected to the EU interoperability gateway, so it could also warn about contacts with users of the German, Italian, Irish and Spanish apps.
Private and secure by design
- Contact data was stored only on the phone and deleted automatically after 14 days.
- The app did not record location - not even when GPS was switched on.
- A phone number was optional. SPKC received it only if the user had been in contact with an infected person, together with the date, signal strength and duration of the contact.
What counted as a contact?
15 minutes or more within about 2 metres of another person who also had the app turned on. Both phones recorded the encounter in encrypted form. If one of them later tested positive, the app warned the other - without revealing the identity of either person, and explained what to do next.
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The app relied on Bluetooth and the Apple and Google Exposure Notification framework to keep data private and secure.