In Britain, a mobile application for monitoring the spread of coronavirus is being tested

The task of the technology is to quickly track and inform people who were in the vicinity of infected COVID-19. The UK is testing a smartphone app that, along with other measures, should help control the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

The trial

The trial begins this week on the Isle of Wight with a population of about 140,000, according to Voice of America. This island has an area of ​​over 380 square kilometers and is separated from the south coast of England by a strait from 4 to 8 kilometers wide. The task of technology, which is also used or planned in other countries, is to quickly track and inform people who have been in the vicinity of infected COVID-19.
The government in London hopes that, along with other precautions, the use of such technologies will help to gradually abolish quarantine to prevent the recurrence of the epidemic. The application uses Bluetooth wireless communication, which operates between smartphones at close range, to register contacts between people. If a person develops symptoms or tests confirm COVID-19 and records it in the application, all other users who have been close to that person should receive automatic alerts and advice on further action, such as a test recommendation, or possibly self-isolate.

Advantages

“By downloading this application to your smartphones, you will protect your health, the health of your beloved ones, and the people around you,” says British Health Minister Matt Gencock. The use of the application will be voluntary, but for the technology to work, as many people as possible must have it in their smartphones – preferably more than half of the population.

But experts say that even use at more than 20% would provide enough useful data to track the spread of the virus. Read also Dogs can help diagnose coronavirus – scientists The British government has decided to test its application, which, unlike similar technologies in other European countries, collects information from smartphones and processes it centrally.

Minister assured that when developing the British application, one of the key requirements was the confidentiality of users’ personal information. Similar applications are also offered separately by Apple and Google, which claim that their technology involves the exchange of information only between smartphones and does not send data to centralized cells.

South Korea is called one of the most successful examples of the use of technology to track the spread of the virus.