How to activate COVID-19 contact tracing on iPhone and receive exposure notifications

With iOS 13.7, iPhone owners can use COVID-19 contact tracing to receive exposure alerts when near someone with the coronavirus symptoms. Follow along with iDB as we show you how to activate COVID-19 contact tracing on iPhone to receive exposure notifications.

About COVID-19 contact tracing

In May 2020, the release of iOS 13.5 brought a rudimentary COVID-19 Exposure Notifications feature, based on a contact-tracing API that Apple co-developed in partnership with Google. The API enables health organizations to developer contact-tracing apps that help combat the spread of the novel coronavirus (for details, visit covid19.apple.com/contacttracing).

The iOS 13.7 update, released in September 2020, made it easier for public health authorities to adopt the API thanks to another new feature, called Exposure Notifications Express. The purely optional feature lets you get exposure alerts without having to use an app.

Importantly, it requires support from your local public health authority. If an official app using the API is unavailable in your region, you’ll need to download your public health authority’s contact-tracing app. At the time of this writing, US states of Maryland, Nevada, Virginia and Washington DC supported the API, with more to follow in the future.

How COVID-19 contact tracing works

The COVID-19 Exposure Notifications feature uses Bluetooth to notify you if you happen to be near someone with COVID-19 symptoms (provided they also use a contact-tracing app). Basically, your iPhone looks for iOS and Android phones with this feature on.

It then securely shares and keeps a rolling 14-day log of their shared identifiers. This allows an app to notify the user that they may have been exposed to COVID-19. “Apps you authorize can only notify you if you’re exposed to COVID-19,” Apple notes.

If someone gets a positive diagnosis they can choose to report it through an official contact-tracing app. As a result, the system anonymously notifies people who have been near that person of possible exposure to the coronavirus.

And if they’ve been exposed, your public health authority can notify you. Your iPhone will check for your log for exposure to anyone who has reported a positive COVID-19 diagnosis. If an exposure exceeds your public health authority’s guidelines, you’ll be alerted.

How to enable COVID-19 contact tracing on iPhone

To turn on the Exposure Notifications feature on your iPhone, be sure to update it to the latest version of iOS in Settings → General → Software Update. If automatic updates for iOS releases are enabled, you might already have the update. You will also need to enable Bluetooth in Settings → Bluetooth for the system to work.

Follow these steps to activate COVID-19 contact tracing on iPhone:

1. Open Settings on your iPhone running iOS 13.7 or later.
2. Tap “Exposure Notifications” in the root list.
3. On the next screen, tap “Turn On Exposure Notifications”
4. Choose your country, and possibly region or state, if asked.
5. If the system finds a contact-tracing app in your region tap Open App Store.
6. Download your public health authority’s contact-tracing app from the App Store.
7. Launch the contact-tracing app you just downloaded.
8. Enable contact tracing in the app.
9. Tap “Enable” in the system prompt to confirm the action

Doing so will turn on both COVID-19 Exposure Logging and Notifications.

“Your iPhone can securely collect and share random IDs with nearby devices,” as per Apple. “The app can use these IDs to notify you if you may have been exposed to COVID-19”. The date, duration and signal strength of an exposure will be shared with the app.

In other words, you’ll receive a notification on your iPhone if you’ve spent enough time in the near vicinity of a person who has COVID-19 and has noted in in their contact-tracking app.

Reporting your own positive diagnosis

If you get a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, report it in your contact-tracing app or go to Settings → Exposure Notifications and hit “Share a Diagnosis in [CONTACT_TRACING_APP]”. If you tap your contact-tracing app in Settings, you may see some additional options.

As an example, I live in Croatia and our official contact-tracing app provides two options there. One controls if details of potential exposure (date, duration and so forth) are shared with the app. The other makes it easy to share your travel status with your health institution.

Other Exposure Notifications settings

With the Exposure Notifications feature enabled in Settings → Exposure Notifications, you may see some additional option on that screen, too. For instance, “Availability Alerts” (enabled by default) notifies you if an app is available in your current region. Apple says your region is determined by your iPhone and does not leave your device.

And if you turn on “Weekly Update” (off by default), you shall receive a push notification each week informing you of how many possible exposures have been identified and shared with your public health authority.

Disabling Exposure Notifications

Follow these steps to disable Exposure Notifications on your iPhone:

1. Open Settings on your iPhone running iOS 13.7 or later.
2. Tap “Exposure Notifications” in the root list.
3. On the next screen, tap “Turn Off Exposure Notifications”.
4. Confirm the operation by tapping “Turn Off and Delete Data”.

Doing so will disable notifications from all contact-tracing apps on the device. Additionally, it will delete your log along with any possible exposures.

Seeing exposure checks

Follow these steps to see if your exposure log has been checked in the past 14 days:

1. Open Settings on your iPhone running iOS 13.7 or later.
2. Tap “Exposure Notifications” in the root list.
3. Now tap “Active” near the top.
4. On the next screen, tap “Exposure Checks”.

As mentioned, your iPhone keeps a record of all requests to check your exposure log from the past 14 days. If someone else’s contact-tracing app app has checked your exposure log in the past 14 days, it will be listed there.

Deleting exposure log

To delete your COVID-19 exposure log, follow these steps:

1. Open Settings on your iPhone running iOS 13.7 or later.
2. Tap “Exposure Notifications” in the root list.
3. Now tap “Active” near the top.
4. Tap “Delete Exposure Log” at the bottom.
5. Tap “Delete” to confirm the operation.

Doing so will permanently delete COVID-19 exposure log from your device.

As a result, all the random IDs your iPhone has collected will be cleared as well. Deleting your exposure log will prevent your contact-tracing app from notifying you of possible exposure to COVID-19. This is automatically turned off after you delete all contact-tracing apps from the device.

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Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2020/09/03/covid-19-contact-tracing-iphone-tutorial/