For the boss, one thing was clear: As the editor of the Corona-Warning App he was glad that the 14.1 million users that were recorded by the Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) on Tuesday. Within the first two weeks so many people have the application on your phone loaded, was a “very successful Start,” said RKI President Lothar Wieler.For the head of the App, which is intended to alert the user to a contact with an Infected is, “a building block in the pandemic fight”. The application could help, “the chain of Infection at an early stage to interrupt,” said Wieler.

Kim-Björn Becker

editor in the policy.

F. A. Z.

Joachim Müller-Jung

editor in the features section, responsible for the area of “nature and science”.

F. A. Z. Twitter

to sell, In fact, it is easy to the application when looking at the Numbers as a success. Already 24 hours after the Start of the 16. June had downloaded 6.5 million users of the App, after a week, there were 12.2 million, almost twice as many. In the result, up to 400,000 new users were added every day. With the 14 million users were registered on Tuesday, would have reached the App more than every fourth owner of a compatible smartphone. An estimated 50 million people in Germany have a model that is modern enough for the App, it only runs on the popular operating systems Android and iOS.
How successful the App really is, but can say practically nobody – and this will probably not change anything more.

First achievements, but also criticism

While the number of Downloads gives an indication of the remarkable acceptance of the application. But it is not collected, how many users use the App actively. And, above all, no one knows how many people have been warned by the App before a so-called risk contact with a Corona-Infected. It has something to do with the functioning of the program. Pressure from privacy advocates, the Federal government has decided that the App should not store the data centrally. The essential information is only available on the devices. Therefore, it is according to the RKI, “not possible to say how many people have received a risk alert”. Most of the users, the App is likely to show only a green box: “no-risk encounter”.

As the App was just a week on the market, were users of Apple’s iPhone in the settings of your phone for the first time, and see how many so-called keys were already stored in the System – the anonymous code, can refer to infection messages. After a week of 503 numbers were deposited, on Tuesday, already in 1450. This does not mean, however, that many users have already reported as infected. On the one stored in the database for a device, often multiple keys, because each device generates a new key – the application stores data for up to two weeks.