The vote on the “Stay Away COVID” app is scheduled for Friday, while Parliament is also expected to make the use of outdoor mask mandatory.
“There have been many doubts about this move,” Prime Minister Antonio Costa told TVI in an interview Monday night, which had asked the president of parliament to withdraw the vote from the agenda.
“It’s smart to have a deeper discussion to clear up any doubts so that the Portuguese continue to download the app, which is and respects anonymity,” Costa said.
“Stay Away COVID” warns users when they have recently contacted a positive coronavirus result.
To date, about two million of Portugal’s other 10 million people have downloaded it, but the government says it is far from enough to make it work properly.
A spokesperson for Portugal’s national knowledge coverage firm CNPD, Clara Guerra, told the AFP that the requirement to download the app raised concerns about privacy and ethics.
Some observers have questioned whether making the application mandatory is constitutional.
Portuguese doctors said Monday that “there is no falsified clinical evidence that the use of the app can contribute particularly to reducing the onset of COVID-19. “
Several countries have introduced tracking applications, an essential weapon that opposes greater COVID-19 transmission, but the effects have been disappointing.
France will release a variant this week: “All anti-COVID” (all those who oppose COVID) after a first flop.
Portugal, which locked up early to avoid the worst excesses of the first wave of the pandemic, has in recent weeks seen an increase in the number of instances with last Friday a record 24 hours of 2608 new instances.