Covid-19: 500 users of tracing app have received close contact alerts

The HSE has confirmed that the device is believed to be running on 1.17m devices in Ireland at present. Picture: Leah Farrell/Rollingnews.ie 

Almost 500 users of the Covid-19 tracker app have received a close contact alert since it was launched on July 7.

487 people have been told there were in close proximity to a confirmed case.

The Irish Examiner reported that the app has been deleted over 500,000 times since its launch, leading to questions as to how effective it can be.

Gar MacCriosta Product Manager for the app said due to privacy issues - it is difficult to tell how many reinstalled it. 

"We recovered a lot of the numbers of that came back. But it's one of those things, because of the privacy-preserving nature of this, we can't tell. We can tell for some things.

"Our Net position as of the thirteenth [of August] we lost 83,000 people something like that. 

"A lot of the people came back once they discovered it was safe to come back," said Mr MacCriosta. 

The HSE has confirmed that the device is believed to be running on 1.17m devices in Ireland at present.

However, the total number of registrations according to the app itself at the time of publication was 1.734m, a difference of 564,000, or more than a third of the number of people who are supposed to be using it.

Further, the HSE is unable to confirm how many people who have the app on their phones are using it correctly, that is, with bluetooth and GPS (in the case of Android) enabled.