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STAYAWAY COVID: First extended test of the app with 13,000 people registered in a study on COVID-19

This option "is part of the architecture so that it is not possible to identify people", explains the researcher, referring that one never knows who is the doctor who legitimizes the codes, also guaranteeing the voluntary use of the application, because it is not confirmed if the person infected will use them.

And how are doctors' codes issued and used? At this stage, the interface may not yet be available for doctors to make the codes available, but the initial component has already been developed by INESC TEC and is now being integrated by SPMS.

"It is important [integration] because we don't want doctors to have to log in to 3 or 4 different systems", he justifies.

In Portugal it was defined that the validation of a positive COVID user in the system is done by a doctor, although in other countries that are using the same architecture the options are different.

The STAYAWAY COVID app based on the architecture defined by the consortiumDP ^ 3T and this is a base that is also being used to ensure international interoperability, although the use of a common platform for all countries is currently being discussed in Europe within the framework of eHealth, which allows the exchange of keys of the various apps of the EU Member States.

The INESC TEC team has developed contacts with other application development platforms, from Spain to Sweden, with whom it maintains closer contacts, not least because they collaborate in the DP ^ 3T consortium since April.

"There are some countries that are ahead of Portugal and others are at the same level", evaluates Orlando Pereira. Sweden, Germany and Italy are already in production, at different stages, while France and the United Kingdom have followed different options and are changing their strategies.

Even with all the obstacles that have been faced, the assessment of CNPD and the need for legislation and the approval of Apple, the researcher does not admit that these factors have been obstacles. "We have solved problems and made progress", he stresses. Asked if these factors caused delays, he replied that "he would not call delays", remembering that these are steps that must be taken to make the right path.

Source code will be made available after audit

The non-availability of the source code of the application has been one of the most controversial topics, especially among the technical community. Questioned by SAPO TEK, Jos Orlando Pereira states that some of the source code for the server component is already available, and there are also published components on the app side.

But it guarantees the "availability of the code at the end of this pilot", adding that "we are conducting extra audits of the code", aiming to ensure that all licenses of the various code libraries that were used are being respected.

The idea is not to hide the code, as SAPO TEK guarantees. "I suspect that some desire [to see the code] will be frustrated because it cannot be compiled and work on mobile phones", he explains, saying that it will not be possible to use this code to do something similar, not least because the APIs of Google and Google Apple will not be published.