Sir, – The article "Covid tracker app used by few to identify close contacts"(News, Januarry 20th) may lead some to believe that individuals are to blame for the low usage of the HSE Covid app for contact tracing ("Only 20,946 had used the Government app for the purpose for which it was intended by uploading close contacts").
The likely reason that people aren’t using the HSE’s contract tracing app for contact tracing is, ironically, because the HSE won’t let them. A six-digit code from the HSE is required in order to automatically notify any close contacts.
I recently got Covid and this code wasn’t provided to me by the HSE. I couldn’t use the app to notify close contacts, even though I wanted to.
The HSE should be giving these codes to every infected person. If it isn’t, why not? How often are they being given out? How many people that have been given a code successfully uploaded their contact tracing data?
The Covid tracker app isn’t being used to anywhere near its full potential.
Only the HSE can tell us why. – Yours, etc,
NICK BELL,
Dublin 8.