WA Notify Expands To Include At-Home COVID-19 Testing

OLYMPIA, WA — The Washington State Department of Health has announced a new feature for WA Notify, the state's COVID-19 exposure notification app, allowing users who have tested positive for COVID-19 at home to anonymously notify others who they may have exposed to the coronavirus.

Previously, WA Notify required a positive test result from a laboratory before it would allow users to alert their contacts about their potential COVID-19 exposure. By expanding the app to include at-home testing, state health leaders say they're hoping WA Notify will help slow the coronavirus' spread— especially pertinent now that the more-transmissible omicron variant has taken hold in Washington.

“Slowing the spread of COVID-19 is dependent upon early notification to close contacts of everyone who tests positive for the virus,” said Tao Kwan-Gett, MD, Washington State Chief Science Officer. “By including the option to request verification codes for positive at-home tests, more individuals can be notified earlier so they can take the steps to protect themselves and others.”

If you don't have WA Notify installed, getting it up and running is pretty easy: all you need is a smartphone. For iPhone users, it can be found and turned on in the Settings Menu, under "Exposure Notifications". Android users just need to download the WA Notify app from the Google Play store.

Once activated, the app interfaces with other phones that also have it installed, trading codes over Bluetooth that are randomized to maintain anonymity. If one user later tests positive for the coronavirus, the program then notifies every other user who was near the infected patient during their exposure period.

The program is voluntary, and the state has repeatedly stressed that it is anonymous, and does not track a user's personal information. Since the app launched in November 2020, the Department of Health says it has been enabled on more than 2.75 million phones across Washington— about 45 percent of all smartphones in the state.

>> Learn more about the program, or find more detailed installation instructions from the Washington State Department of Health.