April 14, 2020, Kathmandu
Apple and Google have worked together and announced technology for tracking the spread of the Coronavirus. The app is a Bluetooth-based COVID-19 contact tracing platform. It alerts people if they’ve been near the people who were infected with the virus.
The main motive/ goal of the app is to track down the people infected by Coronavirus and the people with who they have been in contact. Apple and Google are using Bluetooth LE signals for contact tracing.
What is contact tracing, and why is it important?
Contact tracing is one of the new ‘interventions that can be used to control virus outbreaks effectively. Contact tracing is a massive component in ending the mass pandemic. Contact tracing with the traditional method can be both time consuming and hard. Surely tracing the infected persons every step is hard. But what if we discover the electronics which the person carries everywhere with them.
What can it be? Smartphones? Yes, yes, smartphones. We tend to bring smartphones to every place we visit.
Using their smartphone, we can trace people’s movements and people they have contact with, and this is what Google and Apple are working for. While phone tracking can’t replace traditional methods like interviews, it can supplement them.
How does this work?
When two people are near to each other, so are their smartphones. Their phone during close contact exchanges an anonymous identification key, recording that they’ve had close contact. The system later informs you if a person you have been in close contact with has been diagnosed with COVID-19.
The system will notify other users they’ve been close to, so those people can self-quarantine if necessary. Ideally, this means you won’t have to reveal your name, location, or other personal data.
The new technology will send information once the mobile user comes into contact with the Coronavirus infected person.
However, the technology will not record GPS location data or individual information.
Earlier on Friday, the two tech -giants agreed to work together to aid the world struggling against the pandemic.