WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Palm Beach County has a new tool in its arsenal to battle back against COVID-19.
"We have to try everything that we can try," Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner said in an interview with Contact 5. "If there's another option out there to help this community, we need to try it."
With just a quick download, Kerner is hoping to stop the spread.
"It's another form of contact tracing," explained Kerner. "We're going to ask our constituents to open this app when they go out in public."
It's called CombatCOVID PBC -- and Palm Beach County recently purchased the app from an area app developer for $775,000.
"There are critics (who) say the app is not the best that it can be," Kerner told Contact 5. "My question to them is, are we better off not having it or are we better off having it? And I think it's another tool in our toolbox."
The app works like this: the exposure notification system shares an anonymous key using Bluetooth with other nearby phones using the app.
Suppose one user tests positive for COVID-19 and logs the test result with the app. In that case, it will anonymously notify other people with a push notification who came into contact over the previous two weeks with the COVID-19 positive app user.
The county said it's a promising tool to fight the spread of the coronavirus. But Contact 5 learned that, as of Wednesday, it had only been downloaded by about 4,900 users.
"We're talking over 60% of the population would probably have to take it up to make it worthwhile," Dr. Terry Adirim told Contact 5 in an interview.
Adirim is a professor of pediatrics and senior associate dean for clinical affairs at Florida Atlantic University's Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine. Adirim also worked as a senior medical official at the Department of Homeland Security during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
"You need a critical mass of people," Adirim said. "They would need over a million people to take this app up before it would even be useful in the Palm Beach County community."
The app's developer, Shield Group Technologies, disputes the notion that you would need 60% of the population using the app to make it effective. The company pointed to a recent study that found "even with lower numbers of app users, we still estimate a reduction in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths."
"This is not something that there's a perfect system available for," the developer told Contact 5. "If we can get enough people to download it... and we can save 100 people, or 500 people, or 1,000 people from catching this and possibly dying from it, then we've done a great job."
Kerner concurred, telling Contact 5, "This is an opportunity for them to participate from a technological perspective."
"We can legislate, we can enforce, we can pass rules, we can invest money, but COVID-19 will only be beat by the community at-large," Kerner said.
Kerner said Miami-Dade County also purchased the app, and Palm Beach County will soon start a public service campaign in conjunction with Miami-Dade to get the message out about the app.
"Out of the $261 million of CARES Act funding we received, to invest $800,000 of that into new technology that can save lives, I'm not going to apologize for that," Kerner said. "I'm going to ask my constituency to download the app and be a partner in it."