BLUF: Everyone feels fine, and tested negative for COVID.

So! my spouse’s COVID alert app alerted Saturday morning, and since I haven’t heard about anyone else having this happen yet, I thought I’d comment on our experience. https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/covid-alert.html 1/

We immediately cancelled our weekend plans (some outdoor visits) & drove to the drive-through test centre. Getting tested was straightforward (we’ve also had it before seeing grandparents) but it was clear that the systems have not yet been updated to reflect the COVID app. 2/

Neither the intake form nor the doctor’s questions had an option for indicating referral from the COVID app. Spouse was classified as a “close contact” which errs on the side of caution, since by definition with the app we have no idea where he was exposed.* 3/

*We contacted our bubble, of course, & some others we had outdoor visits with. We think it was either a tradesperson in our home (masked mostly-distanced) or when Spouse was doing some work outside, in ~2m proximity to another picnic table (outdoor mostly-distanced). 4/

The kids and I were classified as “voluntary referral.” So there's a Schroedinger’s virus problem – if my spouse was infected, we're immediately close contacts. But unless he got a positive test, we were not so classified. So that seems to err on the side of under-cautious. 5/

The materials distributed also haven’t been updated to reflect the app. The app refers you to Public Health Ontario, and says once you have a negative test (which we did) no further isolation is necessary. 6/

The leaflet at the test centre says if you have a negative result and are a “close contact”, you should isolate for 14 days. We followed the info from the app, since we were pretty sure all our interactions had been low-risk & therefore a false negative was low probability. 7/

They do need to get this straight based on medical advice, because which advice people follows matters for things like return to work/school, and there does seem to be a qualitative difference between a ‘close contact’ and an ‘app contact’ 8/

An app alert *should be* a failsafe in case masking & distancing hasn’t protected you outside your normal routine / bubble. Test is a 3rd level of protection. If case #s/R(t) go up, but app penetration stays (as predicted) low, we need to give the right people the right advice 9/

As we let people know about our potential exposure 2 things happened: 1) it became clear that lots of people think the app tells you that you’ve been *infected* (it doesn’t), & 2) lots of our friends & relatives downloaded the app – which is a good outcome! 10/

But the bottom line is we’re feeling grateful for our health, and justified in our decision to keep our interactions conservative. And this reinforced for us how sneaky the virus is. Download the app! /end