The Virginia government will reportedly have spent over $1.7 million for the COVID-19 exposure reporting app COVIDWISE, which 13.5% of cell phone users have downloaded. Approximately $1.5 million was spent on marketing alone.
The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) and SpringML Inc. received $229,000 in CARES federal emergency funding to co-develop and launch COVIDWISE. The app allows users to upload their positive test results, which allows other users to receive exposure notifications. Users will only be notified if they have been within a 6 foot vicinity for over 15 minutes.
COVIDWISE is a collaborative project between Google and Apple. The app doesn’t collect any personal or geographic data from users.
The $1.5 million went to Madison+Maine, a Richmond-based marketing company. Madison+Maine has worked extensively with government and administrative bodies in the past – including the Virginia Attorney General’s office and the City of Chesapeake.
Marketing for the app covers digital advertising on social media, print, transit, radio, and broadcasting.
“The cornerstone of this campaign is to drive people to COVIDWISE.org,” stated David Saunders, Chief Idea Officer at Madison+Maine.
In an interview with The Virginia Star, VDH Director of Health Informatics & Integrated Surveillance Systems Jeff Stover stated that recent coverage pointing out the percentage of downloads from the state population doesn’t accurately reflect the app’s success.
“Seven percent is a bad number – newborns don’t have cell phones, 89-year-olds don’t have cell phones. We went to the U.S. Census Bureau, took the number of people ages 18 to 65, and accepted a notion that our market is an 80 percent coverage [of the population].”
Stover affirmed that percentage equates to 4.25 million people.
“We use that number to report our downloads. That percentage – 13.5% – is the real number that matters.”
Stover also reported that their office is seeing two to five thousand downloads a day, with approximately 10,000 downloads this past weekend.
Governor Ralph Northam and his administration reportedly used the app to notify their staff of their positive test results.
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Corinne Murdock is a reporter at The Virginia Star and the Star News Network. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to [email protected].
