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After an update to version 1.5.
The German app can now also warn users of the Italian app
Photo: Medien Service Mueller I Oliver Mueller / imago images / MedienServiceMüller
The federal corona warning app can now also warn across national borders about a potentially risky encounter with corona infected people.
As announced, the update to version 1.5 was released in the Google and Apple app stores on Monday afternoon.
This means that contacts with users of the official Corona apps from other countries can now also be determined when determining the risk.
For the time being, the app was connected to the Irish and Italian warning apps via a European interface.
This would allow Irish and Italian app users to be warned about risky contacts with Germans who use the app and vice versa.
Other countries, including Denmark, Latvia and Spain, are also to be connected to the system soon.
Countries such as the Netherlands, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic are expected to follow in November.
Up to 16 national apps could be linked to one another by the end of the year.
An exchange of data with Switzerland is also under discussion.
However, for technical reasons, the French warning app cannot be connected because - unlike the apps in other countries - it follows a central storage concept.
(Read more about the decentralized storage of the German warning app here.) Hungary has also opted for a central concept and cannot currently be integrated into the EU gateway.
Data comparison via European system
The respective coronavirus warning apps continue to connect exclusively to their own national backend server, according to the EU Commission on the update.
The national servers are not directly connected to each other.
"They exchange information via the EU data comparison service, which greatly reduces the consumption of data volume compared to direct exchange between participating apps."
FDP calls for a comparison between centralized and decentralized app models
The FDP member of the Bundestag Manuel Höferlin said he knew about a solution from a German start-up that would enable data to be exchanged between centralized and decentralized storage models.
The chairman of the Digital Agenda Committee called on the German government to sound out this approach.
"The smooth exchange of data with neighboring countries such as France must have the highest priority due to the daily commuter flows."
Version 1.5 of the German Corona warning app makes the European link in the background: users do not have to do anything to activate the EU mode.
Users in other countries sometimes have to activate the function themselves.
At the same time as the cross-border risk assessment, the app has been expanded to include a function with which infected people can enter whether and when they have symptoms of the disease.
Infected users can enter their symptoms there.
With the help of this information, the app's algorithm can calculate the risk of infection more precisely.
The German warning app is currently used by around 16 million people.
This can be seen from the number of daily comparisons with the servers of the warning app.
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hpp / dpa
