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Check in with the Luca app
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Bernd Weissbrod / dpa
The state of Saxony-Anhalt will terminate its cooperation agreement for using the Luca app to track contacts in the corona pandemic.
The cabinet decided on Tuesday in Magdeburg, as the State Chancellery announced.
The contract with the private provider expires at the end of March.
For example, the Luca app is intended to help the operators of restaurants and clubs or organizers of concerts to collect the legally required data from visitors without paperwork.
This should enable the health authorities to digitally track contacts and thus slow down the further spread of the corona virus.
In Saxony-Anhalt, however, the health authorities hardly used the Luca app.
The state incurred costs of almost one million euros for using the Luca app in Saxony-Anhalt.
As the state government announced, districts and independent cities can conclude their own contracts with the provider if necessary.
"We said from the start that the Luca app made little sense for us," Eike Hennig, spokesman for the health authorities in Saxony-Anhalt, recently told SPIEGEL. The data from the app would hardly help to contain the pandemic because they are not precise enough to assess the actual risk of infection, for example in a restaurant. He does not accuse any ministry of having acquired Luca, after all it was done in good faith, they tried to make the work of the offices easier. »But today you have to say that that was a mistake.«
Bayern will no longer use Luca either.
The Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs announced on Tuesday that “in the future, anonymous contact tracking and the further development of the federal government’s Corona Warning App (CWA)” will be used.
The reason is the rapid spread of the omicron variant, “which makes it much more difficult for the health authorities to track individual contacts.
Contact data collection by the Luca app is therefore no longer indicated."
The Free State will "therefore not conduct a new tender for an app for contact collection and will let the existing contract with Culture4Life GmbH expire on April 5, 2022".
Schleswig-Holstein and Bremen will not renew their Luca licenses either.
In Hesse, the state government is still evaluating the benefits of the app, while in other federal states there is a dispute about extending the contract.
pbe/dpa