From Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, Sant Cugat de Vallès, Spain
As pointed out in your analysis of contact-tracing apps, the big question about them is whether or not they will, technically speaking, work well enough (25 April, p 9). The amount of false positive and false negative contacts might be huge.
The article describes a few situations that could lead to incorrect contact detections, but it is easy to think of many more. We need a well-designed pilot trial in the real world to properly evaluate the false positives and false negatives. If these numbers are high, then there is a high risk that false positives could saturate medical centres. False negatives, on the other hand, could result in many missed infectious contacts.
Another concern occurs to me: the false sense of security that such apps might induce in people. They might cause people to relax and take fewer precautions.
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