Americans are surprisingly open to letting their phones be used for coronavirus tracking

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Programming note: The Interface will be off on Thursday.

Today Apple and Google released an initial version of the API that represents the first phase of their joint effort to enable public health authorities to quickly identify people who may have been exposed to new cases of COVID-19. By mid-May it should be available to most health agencies. And so it’s time to revisit a question we first asked here three weeks ago: will Americans actually use these apps?

That’s the question posed in a new survey conducted by the University of Maryland and the Washington Post. The findings are mixed, report Craig Timberg, Drew Harwell and Alauna Safarpour:

Nearly 3 in 5 Americans say they are either unable or unwilling to use the infection-alert…

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