The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning to launch this month an app to allow people in under-resourced countries to determine whether they might have the latest coronavirus, and is also considering a Bluetooth-based contact tracing feature, an official said Friday to Reuters. The app will ask people about their symptoms and provide guidance on whether they might have COVID-19, the potentially lethal disease caused by the coronavirus, WHO chief information officer Bernardo Mariano said. Other details, such as how to get checked, will be customized by country of user.
Although the WHO will release a version on global app stores, any government can take the underlying technology of the app, add features, and release its own version on app stores, Mariano said in a phone interview.
India, Australia, and the United Kingdom have all released official virus apps using their own technologies, with common features like asking people when to get checked based on their symptoms and recording people's movements to make touch tracing more effective.
Several countries are ramping up touch tracking, or identifying, monitoring, and isolating individuals who have crossed pathways with an infectious person. It is seen as vital to safely open economies, and applications that could speed up efforts to automate parts of the process.
The WHO expects its application to draw interest in other nations, including those in South America and Africa where the number of cases is growing. We may lack the technology and engineers to build applications, or may fail to provide testing and training.
"Honestly, the importance is for countries that have nothing," Mariano said. "We'd leave behind those who can't (provide an app), who have frail health systems." Engineers and programmers, including those who previously worked at Alphabet's Google and Microsoft, have been volunteering to create the new app for weeks, with about five of them supervising the project.
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