problem of having a very large, diverse, heterogeneous country with a staggered
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Caroline Buckee, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard University,
said on a September episode of the Ask a Harvard Professor podcast.
In New York, which was hit hard at the outset of the pandemic, 740,000 people
have downloaded the state’s contact-tracing app, COVID Alert NY, as of Oct. 1,
according to Jonah Bruno, Director of Communications at NYS Department
of Health.
“We understand how important privacy is to building public trust. The COVID
Alert NY app was built with privacy and data security central to the design. All
user data is anonymous, the app does not track your location, and explicit user
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COVID Alert NY are helpful tools to strengthen contact tracing programs and
stop the spread of COVID-19,” Bruno says. “We continue to work with
community partners across the state to raise awareness and encourage all New
Yorkers over the age of 18 to download COVID Alert NY to protect themselves,
their friends, families and neighbors.”
Professor Michelle Mello, a health law scholar for Stanford University suggests
letting communities take the lead. “I think we’d be in a better place if folks could
come together and create a public charter on how they want to run these apps in
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There’s been a lot of good thinking, but it’s thinking by elites,” she says.
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Professor Buckee notes, “Traditional contact tracing is quite intrusive. You learn
everything about where that person’s been. You take names and phone
numbers, that’s the whole point of it. And so, I think some of these apps are still
really in the trial phase.”
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