After criticism of the lack of data protection and the alleged ineffectiveness of the contact tracking app Luca, an update is coming soon. Health authorities should be able to contact users directly.
The controversial Luca app to contain the corona pandemic is to be expanded and improved in cooperation with the health authorities in autumn. In the future, the doctors of the health authorities will be able to contact the users of the Luca app directly and warn them in different levels, announced Patrick Hennig, Managing Director of Culture4Life GmbH, on Thursday. So far, app users have only received a general notification when a health department accesses a person’s Luca data.
The “comprehensive update” is currently being tested and fine-tuned with the health authorities in Hamburg, Munich, Hanover, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg, Augsburg and North Frisia. The health authorities would benefit from differentiated warnings and higher data quality. Luca will also provide additional information about the venue. In order to improve the assessments with regard to the possible risk of infection, details such as ventilation, size, walkways and room layout will be recorded in the future. “This helps health authorities to assess possible risks better, more easily and more quickly.”
New app for restaurant operators and event organizers
The Luca app aims to replace the mess of paper that arises from analogue recording of visits to restaurants, exhibitions and other events. The application has been criticized for months by data protection activists and numerous security researchers. You interfere with the central data storage and consider the app to be ineffective. The Luca skeptics also include individual representatives from health authorities, for example in Berlin-Neukölln.
Hennig emphasized that in the future the system will also be able to automatically detect locations with a possible increased infection rate, for example if two possible cases of infection are discovered in one location or more. The system is then able to inform users accordingly.
There will be a separate app for restaurant operators and event organizers, which will add a mobile component to the existing “Luca Locations Management Tool”. This will make it possible, for example, to check the vaccination and recovery status of the guests or test results certificates directly at check-in. The host can also use the app to check out entire tables, which increases the quality of the data.
