UC Berkeley Launches Coronavirus Tracking System

BERKELEY, CA — In a week where Californians faced a landslide of new COVID-19 restrictions and reopening rollbacks, UC Berkely launched a new app to track COVID-19 cases. Those who sign up for the tool will get an alert if they were exposed to coronavirus beginning Monday.

While the notification system, California COVID Notify, became operational Monday for the UC Berkeley community, the tool is part of a University of California pilot program that could become available statewide if it's successful.

"The hope is to soon expand availability to everyone in the state," university officials wrote in a Monday statement.

The pilot program was developed by Apple and Google and uses a "privacy-first" approach to using technology for contract tracing.

The program first began at UC San Diego and UC San Francisco earlier this fall and has seen some success in slowing the spread on those campuses, according to a statement from UC Berkeley.

The program will also soon expand to UC. Davis, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara and the Berkeley Lab.

So how does it work? Using a smartphone, users are able to identify close contacts and notify unknown contacts when testing positive for COVID-19. Anyone participating in the pilot program who tests positive will be provided a PIN to enter into the app.

And immediately after, anyone who was around that person would receive a notification with instructions to quarantine and seek medical help.

The app uses a Bluetooth signal to determine what qualifies as a potential exposure, university officials said. And UC San Diego reported very few instances of false positives during the first pilot.

Those who sign on will never have their identity revealed and locations are not tracked. Alternatively, "anonymous keys are exchanged using Bluetooth."

Apple and Google's contract tracing technology is already being used by several other U.S. states and other countries, as the app was modeled after the SwissCovid app, developed in Switzerland, which was the first country to use it.

While the program is still a pilot, anyone can download the app here. Those who have iPhones will need to upgrade to iOS version 14.2 and then turn on exposure notifications in settings.