New Delhi: More than a month after India launched Aarogya Setu, its official contact-tracing and self-assessment app to fight the coronavirus pandemic now used by over 9 crore Indians, the World Health Organization is readying to launch its own app for users to self-assess for coronavirus symptoms. This app could even come with a contact tracing feature using Bluetooth.
Reuters reported Saturday that the WHO is readying to launch the coronavirus app this month, and is mostly targeting “under-resourced countries”. The report states that the WHO expects the app to be especially relevant to countries in South America and Africa, which are seeing a rise in cases, but may lack access to technology and skill to develop such apps or testing and educational facilities.
“The value is really for countries that do not have anything… We would be leaving behind the ones that are not able to (provide an app), that have fragile health systems,” Bernardo Mariano, WHO’s chief information officer, said, according to the Reuters report.
The WHO Covid-19 app will reportedly ask a user for symptoms and based on the response, provide a diagnosis. Information such as how to get a medical test for the novel coronavirus will be customised based on the country the user is based in.
The WHO will be making the source code for the app publicly available. By doing so, the organisation is designing the app so that any country can customise the app’s features, essentially enabling each country to release its own version of the app based on the original.
Former Google and Microsoft engineers and designers had volunteered to make this app for the WHO, the report added.
However WHO has not yet decided whether the app will feature contact-tracing due to legal and privacy issues related to tracking individuals.
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