Making of SwissCovid

February 2020: The first confirmed COVID-19 case reaches Switzerland. The infected person had been in Italy ten days earlier, at a meeting near Milan.

The rapid spread of the pandemic prompts the Federal Council to ban public and private events. Shops, restaurants and entertainment venues are closed. For the first time since World War II, the army is mobilised and public life comes to a halt. Offices are deserted and we end up in the home office in one fell swoop.

The shutdown of public life sparks a discussion about the strategy after the lockdown. The “TTIQ” (Test, Trace, Isolate, Quarantine) approach emerges early as a possible path. Epidemiologist Marcel Salathé and artist Nicky Case inspire us with their work with the hashtag “One Step Ahead”. How could we be one step ahead of the virus and break the chain of contagion - without invading privacy? We do what we do best and decide to build a digital contact tracing app.

There is little time for implementation. The hackathon is coming up in the last week of March and offers us the chance to get to work on a concept for privacy-protecting proximity tracing. Our team works tirelessly for a whole weekend to come up with a solution. The challenge is great, but the effort bears fruit: at the end of the hackathon, we have a prototype for decentralised proximity tracing in the form of an Android and iOS app. Plus, a new brand: Next Step.

Even though the future is more than ever in the dark, we go ahead one step at a time. We create a website and info material for the Next Step app, with the aim of taking our idea to the general public. We emphasise a clear design language and transparency to make the complex technical architecture easily accessible. The source code has been publicly accessible since the beginning.

Ubique joins DP3T: an international consortium with participation from EPFL and ETH Zurich. DP3T formalises the approach of Privacy Preserving Proximity Tracing, which we also pursue with Next Step.

A historical alliance forms: Apple and Google take DP3T as inspiration and decide to collaborate: together they announce that they will provide an interface on their mobile operating systems so that digital proximity tracing apps can be optimally developed along the lines of DP3T.

So we are the first in the world to use this interface, and thus in the extraordinary position of being able to work with the tech giants at eye level. We are in close exchange and provide them with feedback, which they can incorporate directly. In this way, we are not only developing SwissCovid, but also helping to shape technology in this area internationally.

The director of the Federal Office of Public Health FOPH publicly confirms that the Confederation intends to use a proximity tracing app in the fight against the Corona pandemic. The app is to be developed in collaboration with the two universities EPFL and ETH Zurich and built upon the work of DP3T. This is the birth of the SwissCovid app.

While public life is still at a standstill, the DP3T app, the basis of SwissCovid, leaves the lab and is tested on the front line. The army supports us with experiments to calibrate the measured signal strength. Researchers from EPFL and ETH Zurich are testing the decentralised contact tracing in real-life situations such as in train compartments or restaurants.

While we still only see our colleagues as heaps of pixels, we have gone through a particularly interdisciplinary and intensive phase. We proudly announce the release of the first app based on the new Exposure Notification system. It will be widely used as a productive pilot, also in the army.

Technically, the app was ready, but it still lacked the legal framework. In the summer session, the necessary legal basis for a broad rollout of the app was created. With a clear result, the PT law was approved by the Swiss Parliament. This was an important signal for the acceptance of the project. Now things could get started.

At midnight from 24 to 25 June 2020, version 1.0 of the SwissCovid app is published in both app stores. Three months of exceptional circumstances lie behind us: intensive development, design, testing and exchange with politics and the media.

Roughly one week after the release, the million mark has been reached.

A preprint of a scientific study is published: “Early evidence of effectiveness of digital contact tracing for SARS-CoV-2 in Switzerland”. Initial results show that proximity tracing using exposure notification can effectively interrupt chains of infection. SwissCovid has thus proven to make a helpful contribution to the containment of the pandemic.

With the relaxation of the measures in the summer comes the obligation to provide contact details at events, in catering establishments, etc. It quickly becomes clear that digital solutions can help here - but is that also possible without invading privacy? Researchers at EPFL are publishing “CrowdNotifier”, a protocol that makes it possible to do just that: warn visitors to an event or a catering establishment if a person who tested positive was present at the same time. This presence tracing is based on the same principles as SwissCovid.

The problem: Centralised storage of personal data on insecure servers or on handwritten lists. Our approach: Based on CrowdNotifier, we are building another app, NotifyMe. When checking in with NotifyMe at an event, the encrypted ID of the location is stored locally on the smartphone. If a participant calls in sick after the event, the other people are warned anonymously.

In autumn 2020, the infection numbers and deaths are rising rapidly again. The federal government initiates new measures and tightens the existing ones.

The test phase of NotifyMe at EPFL begins in January. So far, the check-in app is in use in classrooms, cafeterias and meeting rooms and will be rolled out gradually at the Lausanne campus.

As pioneers in the field of digital contact tracing, we set an international standard with SwissCovid. We make the source code and design elements publicly available, which numerous countries around the world make use of to build their own systems upon. As of now, SwissCovid is also interoperable with the German Corona-Warn-App.

With SwissCovid 2.0, it is now possible to check in without leaving a trail of personal data. People checking in at the same place can now be warned of a possible infection regardless of the distance between them.

Exactly two years after we presented Next Step, an app for digital proximity tracing, SwissCovid is temporarily deactivated. It is probably the only app whose disappearance from the stores also makes us breathe a little easier.

During this time, over 200,000 people notified their contacts via SwissCovid after a positive test. In doing so, they have broken chains of infection and actively helped to better survive the pandemic.

The project has reflected our own values to us: We want to solve problems that directly affect people’s lives. Develop solutions that simplify everyday life for many. Digitise in a meaningful way.