Coronavirus tracing app will respect privacy says Arcuri

(ANSA) - Rome, April 21 - The new contact-tracing app to be used in phase two of the coronavirus emergency will respect security and privacy, commissioner Domenico Arcuri said Tuesday.
    Arcuri said the alternative to the app, whose development is now being finalized, was "more deprivation of liberty".
    The commissioner stressed that the app would remain voluntary, saying that reports of its being made compulsory were a "farce".
    Every smartphone that the app is installed on will regularly emit an anonymous ID code that can be picked up by other smartphones using the same app in the area - within a few metres.
    If one of the app users reports that they have tested positive for the coronavius, the system makes it possible to inform the people with whom they have been close to in the previous few days.
    Arcuri said there would be "no hasty decision on phase two" and that the issue of facemasks was a "closed subject" since there are reserves of them.
    He also said that Italy had more ventilators than intensive-care patients.
    He added that Italy was the country that had taken more swabs for he virus than any other, and that a contract for serum tests would be granted on Friday.
    Arcuri also said he was "very confident" that the problem of a maximum price for facemasks would be "soon solved".