Reboot on the way for France's failed coronavirus tracking app

France is to reboot its StopCovid contact tracing app, which has proved a failure since going live four months ago, while coronavirus infections across the country continue to hit record highs. In an interview with France Info this week, Prime Minister Jean Castex revealed the government was working on a “new version” of the tracking tool, to be rolled out during school holidays on 22 October. Mocked on social networks, StopCovid has been downloaded 2.6 million times since June – a paltry figure compared to 18 million downloads for similar apps in Britain and Germany. And it has managed to identify just a handful of potential contact cases.