Washington state to pull plug on Covid notification app
Washington state's Covid exposure app is set to shut down on May 11, in another sign that government agencies are putting Covid-19 in the rearview mirror.
The WA Notify app launched in November 2020, amid the throes of the pandemic and prior to the rollout of Covid vaccines. Since then, an estimated 235,000 people used it to anonymously share news of a positive Covid test result, creating more than 2.5 million exposure notifications.
“We’re tremendously proud of what WA Notify was able to accomplish in a relatively short amount of time, and eager to find ways to utilize this life-saving technology again in the future,” Dr. Bryant Thomas Karras, chief medical informatics officer for the state Department of Health. “Much of WA Notify’s success can be attributed to innovative collaboration among public, private, and academic partners including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and the University of Washington."
The app's sunset comes the same day the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services plans to end its public health emergency declaration, more than three years after the first cases of Covid were discovered in the Puget Sound region.
https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2023/04/25/wa-notify-app-ending.html