(Reuters) – Technologists and health officials around the world are racing to develop smartphone apps to trace who has been in contact with carriers of the novel coronavirus.
FILE PHOTO: Healthcare workers wheel a patient to a triage area at the emergency entrance outside Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in New York city, New York, U.S., May 13, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Contact-tracing, a disease control tactic that traditionally relies on patients’ memories of their movements, identifies people they might have infected so they too can be isolated.
FIRST GENERATION APPS THAT USE BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY
Bluetooth is a short-range radio technology used for things like connecting wireless headphones to a smartphone. It detects when another Bluetooth signal is near and can estimate the distance between devices — making it a good tool for contact-tracing.
Singapore’s TraceTogether, launched in March, was the first…
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