Why one US state will have two coronavirus tracing apps

The news: North Dakota was one of the first American states to launch a coronavirus contact tracing app in April. Now, several weeks into the process of reopening the state, the government in Bismarck says it will take advantage of the newly-released Apple-Google exposure notification system—but that doing so will require it to run two separate apps.

The fact that even one of the smallest states in the US isn’t able to definitively zero in on one single solution illustrates just how difficult it is for governments to figure out what to do next—even months into the pandemic.

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