How to Enable Express Notifications of COVID-19 Infection in IOS 13.7
Apple released iOS 13.7 today. Refresh your device and you will now be able to see if your state supports the COVID-19 Detection Express Notification System. More importantly, you can subscribe to receive these alerts without having to search and configure a separate application. (Nobody likes app sprawl.)
For most of you whose states have not yet participated in the program, you will at least be able to receive a notification if or when you decide to join. (And no, these settings won’t activate the hidden COVID-19 sensor on your phone, because it doesn’t exist .)
To begin, open the application “Settings” and click “Main”> “Software update”. Download and install the update. After your phone restarts, you’ll want to go back to the Settings app and scroll down a bit until you see a new Exposure Alerts section (under the Emergency SOS section).
Click on that and then click on the big blue “Turn on exposure notifications” link. (By default, Availability Alerts should be turned on, which you can turn off if you really don’t want to know that exposure tracking is finally active in your state.)
From there, you will be presented with the COVID-19 Contact Notifications main screen. I usually just click the Continue button to start configuring, but if you’re concerned about the privacy of this system at all, I recommend clicking on the How Impact Alerts Work link and reading. It provides a very simple step-by-step guide to the system that should help allay any concerns about government tracking your location or other foil theories.
Click Continue and you will be prompted to select a country and state. You will most likely see this screen:
If you are in one of the happier states that already use the Exposure Notification API, you will likely see a screen that looks like this:
I have checked many states and none are configured to use Exposure Notifications Express, including four that should be some of the first : Washington, Maryland, Virginia, and Nevada. This is another reason to leave this “Availability Alert” on, because contact tracing becomes much more effective when everyone is using it. To do this, everyone must consent to its use, hence the importance of these availability notices.