With internal borders back open and holiday season on its way, the Robert Koch Institute has opted to make its coronavirus warning app available internationally - starting with Germany’s neighbouring countries. 

Coronavirus warning app now available in 10 EU countries

The German government’s much-anticipated coronavirus warning app was launched to great fanfare 10 days ago - but pretty soon some people began to experience issues, because, at first, the app was only available on the German version of Apple and Google’s app stores. 

Now, however, with internal borders in the Schengen area largely open again, thousands of commuters and holidaymakers will be crossing the borders in and out of Germany every day. The Robert Koch Institute has therefore decided to take steps towards making the application available in as many countries as possible. 

As of now, the Corona-Warn-App is also available in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Denmark, Romania and Bulgaria. The RKI is also exploring the situation in other countries and hopes to gradually release the app further and further afield.

German Corona-Warn-App has been downloaded 12 million times

The Corona-Warn-App uses Bluetooth technology to track when different users of the app come into contact with each other, and how long for. Whenever two users of the app come within range of each other, their smartphones exchange temporary, anonymous IDs. 

If someone tests positive for coronavirus, they enter this manually into the app. Any other users who have been in their close vicinity for a “significant” period of time (approximately 15 minutes) will then receive a notification that they are at risk and should get themselves tested. 

Since its launch 10 days ago, more than 12 million people have downloaded Germany’s Corona-Warn-App. The more people who download it, the more effective it becomes. And for the first time this week, it alerted a batch of users that they were at risk of having contracted the virus. With this new update, the app looks set to be able to keep a lot more people safe.