How will the app help to stop coronavirus?

Have you been near someone who later tests positive for coronavirus? And does this person add their positive status to the app?

Then you will receive a notification. When you get a notification, you have been close to someone who later turned out to have corona. Don’t panic: it is not certain that you also have corona. You have an additional risk of contamination: you may have corona.

Therefore, stay at home for up to 10 days from the date of contact with an infected person. This prevents you from infecting others as well.

Do you have complaints within those 10 days or after? Then contact the GGD to get a test.

Call 0800-1202 to request a corona test free of charge.

If you test positive for coronavirus yourself:

• The GGD will ask you who you have been near to, and the GGD will also call these people.
• Together with an employee of the GGD you can enter your coronavirus status in the app. When a GGD- employee calls you with the test result, they will also ask you if you want to sent out a notification in the app. Coronamelder warns everybody who has been near you and who may have been infected.
• This includes people you know, but also people you do not know: people who otherwise would not have been contacted. This is how the app supports the contact tracing work being done by the GGD.
• In this way, users of the app can avoid infecting other people, even before they feel unwell. By staying at home, for example.
• The notification only tells them that they have been close to somebody who has tested positive, and on which day. It does not tell them who that person was, or where they were at the time.

This is now possible in the Netherlands, but also abroad, in collaboration with the corona apps of EU countries. For example, the international collaboration between apps warns people in the border regions of the Netherlands, or people who stay in the Netherlands because they live, work, celebrate holidays, shop here, etc. This way you know sooner whether you have been in contact with an infected person who uses a corona app from another EU country.

The cooperation is also useful if travelling within the European Union is allowed again, possibly from next year on. The virus will not be gone and the collaborating apps will then support the research for sources and contacts.

See: Does CoronaMelder also work with corona apps from other countries?