In a surprising show of solidarity, major American electronics manufacturers Apple and Google have teamed up. Desperate times tend to make strange bedfellows, of course, as the world is grappling with the novel coronavirus. The two juggernauts of tech are working together to create an app to help track the spread of COVID-19.
The app works by using cellphones with a built-in Bluetooth Low Energy setting. The idea behind the app is that someone could key in whether they’ve been diagnosed with COVID. Then, anyone who gets close to their phone could have the app tell them that they were close to a confirmed case.
This could also be reverse engineered, as the proximity data will be visible to trusted healthcare providers. Doctors could use this information and plug in known cases, matching them to their phones. This, in turn, would allow them to trace all of that person’s recent contacts and screen them for the disease.
While the world has been reeling in its attempts to combat the virus, technology has played a major role in the response. Google and Apple’s joint venture is only the most recent novel way to combat the coronavirus. However, with technology like this available, the speed with which health experts can track the spread of the virus increases immensely.
One of the major threats of COVID is how easy it is to infect others, even when you don’t know you have it. Younger people who carry the disease are often asymptomatic. This is why extreme measures like social distancing and store closures have been implemented. However, with an app that can track the spread of the disease, those measures could become superfluous.
Being able to easily track the spread of the disease makes it easier to locate people who have been infected. They can be administered proper medical care, and then, once the disease has subsided, be cleared to reenter normal society. This, in turn, could allow others to resume somewhat normal activities.
Once technology like this is paired with a treatment or vaccine, which are likely coming, the virus can be considered under control. However, some experts believe that COVID may have spread widely enough through the population already that social distancing, paired with advanced virus tracking, might just be enough. Herd immunity occurs when a large enough number of people develop antibodies to a virus. This helps keep the most vulnerable parts of the population safe.
