Tech giants Apple and Google have come together in their fight against coronavirus with the two collaborating to develop a Bluetooth-based COVID contact tracing platform. The new tracing platform would help governments as well as health workers in tackling the spread of the disease.
With coronavirus transmitted through close proximity, public health authorities, governments universities, and NGOs around the world are for developing contact tracing technology. Adding to this is the new joint venture of Apple and Google. They will use Application Programming Interfaces and operating system-level technology.
Reports said that they will release the first Application Programming Interfaces in May. In the coming months, they would work to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform. They said this would be more robust than an API. They said transparency, privacy and consent of the users are utmost importance.
The companies said they would collaborate with developers, governments and public health providers in their effort to tackle the virus. Once the feature is downloaded in the mobile, a person can know if the other whom he has come in close contact is infected or not.
India already has an Aarogya Setu app which helps in tracing contacts.
