For months ​health officials have attempted to use contact tracing to alert those who’ve been around COVID-19 positive people so that they too can get tested for the coronavirus.

"It's my impression that most of the people that have become sick with COVID want to be a part of making sure their friends and family don’t also get sick," said Contact Tracer ​Rebecca Lyman.

Now that approach is being taken a step further with this Exposure Notifications app, which tells folks who download it on their smartphones that they may have been exposed to those with COVID-19.

Sarah Tuneberg with the state of Colorado says the app allows phones to communicate with each other via Bluetooth whenever their owners are within six feet of each other for at least 10 minutes. Random sets of letters and numbers called tokens are shared.

"There’s no other information that’s exchanged, not location, not name, not health status," Tuneberg said.

 If someone tests positive for COVID-19, they enter a key into their phone which activates all tokens shared in the previous 14 days. A push notification is sent out. Asymptomatic people in particular could get an important heads-up.

​The app, called EN Express in Colorado, popped up on my phone and is now enabled. It was developed in partnership with Apple and Google for use on Android phones and iPhones. 

It's not a game changer, said Colorado State Univ. Computer Science Professor Indrajit Ray, but it appears to be a secure, privacy-protected way to enhance more traditional contact tracing.

"In the ideal set-up, yes this is going to work very well, assuming that everybody has opted in," Ray said.

But many Americans have resisted measures to clamp down on the coronavirus while other countries have used this notification app for a while.

"Somewhere between 30-50% of people in Ireland use this kind of functionality, have it turned on and engaged on their phone," Tuneberg said.

Measuring the app’s success in limiting the virus spread will be challenging but at this point she believes it can’t hurt in the effort, she added.

"It’s definitely one step forward. And it will help us manage this COVID much better," Ray said.

An ad campaign will notify Coloradans about the app as it goes online in the next few weeks.

Check out The China Report, our new weekly newsletter. Subscribe here!