Snippet: iOS 16.4 Allows Health Authorities to End Their Support for Apple’s COVID-19 Exposure Notifications Feature ☇

Chance Miller for 9to5Mac:

Back in 2020, Apple and Google teamed up to launch the Exposure Notifications API for COVID-19 contact tracing. The feature aimed to alert you to potential COVID-19 exposures, allowing you to get a test and isolate yourself if necessary.

Three years later, Apple is now giving health agencies the ability to sunset their adoption of the Exposure Notifications API.

In iOS 16.4, Apple has added underlying support for health departments to end their support of the Exposure Notifications API. When a health authority decides to end support for the feature, users will see a message on their iPhone informing them of that decision.

I thought this was a great idea in light of trying to gather as much data and precautionary awareness as we could, yet sadly the politicization of the pandemic and state governments being bad at tech in general prevented a lot of areas from even utilizing this feature. Then again, we’ve also seen how pathetic the roll-out of driver’s licenses in Wallet, too.