The World Embraces Contact-Tracing Technology to Fight Covid-19

(Bloomberg) —

Covid-19 has killed more than 200,000 people and triggered a severe recession. Governments want to get people back to work, and a key part of this is contact-tracing technology that helps authorities track the virus and warn citizens who may be infected to stay home or get tested.

Tech companies have jumped at the opportunity, with the highest-profile effort coming from Apple Inc. and Google. These tech giants aren’t alone, though. Here’s a round-up of initiatives from around the world:

U.S.

Compared to the rest of the world, the U.S. is behind in developing contact-tracing apps. There is no official national system, and a patchwork of apps have sprung up at the state and even municipal level.

Apple and Google plan to released the first version of their contact-tracing system by the middle of May. This will let health agencies build apps that allow a person who tests positive for Covid-19 to input their diagnosis. The system will then use Bluetooth technology to learn who the person has come into contact with and then notify those people of a possible exposure. A second phase, to be rolled out in the coming months, will have deeper integration with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating systems to rely less on apps.

In early April, a startup repurposed an app that had been used by football fans traveling to far-off championships to begin tracking Covid-19 in North and South Dakota. It’s anonymous, but uses location data to track where people go. If someone tests positive, public health authorities can use the historical data to figure out who else should be tested and quarantined. When Apple and Google’s tool launches, it will be integrated into the app, according to the North Dakota government’s website.Utah’s HealthyTogether app uses Bluetooth and location data to track people’s whereabouts and go back to see who they might have been in contact with if they test positive. The app also lets people input their symptoms and connects them to a testing center if they’re deemed high risk.Nodle, a startup that has developed Bluetooth applications in the past, is building its own app that follows similar principles to Apple and Google’s plan. Using Bluetooth, it keeps tabs on interactions between people, and can notify users if they’ve come into contact with someone who has Covid-19. It’s a global app but is being tested in Berkeley, California right now.

Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the state is building a “tracing army” to track the origin of individual Covid-19 coronavirus cases and reduce the spread of the virus. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies are donating $10.5 million to the effort. (Michael Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

Asia

China, South Korea and Singapore have led the way in developing contact-tracing systems. Some governments already had systems in place, having learned from the SARS epidemic 15 years ago.

South Korean white hat hackers and self-taught coders jumped into the development of tracing apps as early as January, even before there was a domestic outbreak. Coronamap.site, created by a university student, informs users of the movements of confirmed patients and places where infected people have circulated. The government has also developed an app to enforce quarantine orders, which uses location data and tracks whether smartphone users have turned off their GPS. About 90% of people under self-quarantine had installed the government app as of April 13.

China’s tech giants stepped in early to help the government contain the pandemic. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Alipay and Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat, the country’s primary digital payment channels, already tracked the consumer activity of hundreds of millions of users. During the outbreak, both companies released QR code systems that can be read by smartphones and allow authorities to designate which people pose health risks and need to be quarantined and which ones can use public spaces and transportation. The government is using the technology extensively to police the country as it gets back on its feet. Alibaba’s system assigns each user one of three colors — green, yellow or red — based on their location, health information and travel history. Green allows freedom of movement, while yellow and red indicate that people must self-quarantine or enter a supervised quarantine facility, respectively. The system has been widely adopted.