COVID Alert

COVID Alert (French: Alerte COVID) was the Exposure Notification service app for the country of Canada. It launched in the province of Ontario on July 31, 2020, and became available in nearly all Canadian provinces by October of that year, excluding Alberta (which continued to use its existing, BlueTrace-based app instead), and British Columbia.

Not to be confused with COVID Alert PA, DE, NY, or NJ, which are based on COVID Tracker Ireland.
COVID Alert
Developer(s)
  • Linux Foundation Public Health Initiative,
  • Canadian Digital Service,
  • Health Canada
Initial releaseJuly 31, 2020
Repositoryhttps://github.com/cds-snc/covid-alert-app
Operating systemAndroid, iOS
Size
  • 40 MB (Android)
  • 12.1 MB (iOS)
Standard(s)Exposure Notification
Available inEnglish, French
TypeDigital contact tracing
WebsiteOfficial website

As with all other implementations of EN, it uses Bluetooth to broadcast and receive randomly-generated IDs to and from the smartphones of other COVID Alert users within the user's vicinity. If a user later tests positive for COVID-19, they can choose to anonymously flag their IDs within a specific timeframe, allowing others to be notified of a possible exposure. As with all other EN apps, COVID Alert requires a smartphone with Bluetooth Low Energy support running Android 6.0 "Marshmallow" or iOS 12.5 and newer.

Although the COVID Alert app was downloaded over six million times, only roughly 57,000 positive cases had been reported into the system—leading some critics to dismiss it as a failure. The app was officially discontinued on June 17, 2022.

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