This is a collection of information from various sources for research and to learn about the possible technological solutions. This is for internal use only. But I’m going to publish it for now and will try to add more useful information that might help people who are brainstorming or working on solutions.

Rajat Dangi 🛠️

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6 min read

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Apr 2, 2020

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South Korea [The Korea Herald Link]

• Coronamap South Korea: Link.
• CORONAITIA
• Over in South Korea, the government has developed a “self-health check” mobile app to keep tabs on travelers entering the country, as well as citizens returning from overseas.
• GPS data is also used in contact tracing. Investigators from the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which is managing the outbreak, will interview patients first, then verify their whereabouts by checking closed-circuit television camera footage, credit card records and mobile phone GPS data.
• The government then releases details about the patients’ travel history — via text messages on the mobile phone and state-managed websites — so the public can avoid places where the virus was once active.

In Germany, High Hopes For New COVID-19 Contact Tracing App That Protects Privacy. [Link]

• The platform would make anonymous use of Bluetooth technology, without storing data from location tracking, thus, GDPR complaint.
• The German government is aiming to launch the app by mid-April.
• The initiative, known as the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT), is run by a European coalition of tech experts and scientists drawn from at least eight countries and led by Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for telecommunications.
• Doctors would be able to use the system by getting permission from those who test positive and putting their information into a central server.
• The ability to track down those at risk of infection more accurately could make it possible to ease countrywide lockdowns that have brought economic activity to a near halt, the app’s creators say.

Indian government releases a COVID-19 contact tracing app. [Link]

• Press-release.
• Arogya Setu — Play Store Link
• Uses Bluetooth and location services to track if a user came into contact with a person “who could have tested COVID-19 positive”. If a user of this app tests positive, the government will contact all other registered users that the infected person came in contact with over the last 30 days.
• The government is racing to trace contacts of COVID-19 positive people, especially as the Health Ministry has identified 20 existing and 22 potential “hotspots” of the virus in the country.
• Uses Bluetooth and location services
• Personal data stored locally on the device
• Only mobile number is compulsory for contact tracing: Giving a mobile number is must for “contact tracing”, but details such as name, age, gender, profession (restricted to essential services such as healthcare workers, law enforcement, delivery, etc.), and international travel history/contact with COVID-19 positive patients are not.
• On testing positive, advisory sent to all registered users the infected person was in contact with: The mobile number will be used to trace back all the active devices that were in close radius of the person in the last 14 days. If someone tests positive, all such contacts will be sent an advisory on whether they need to self-isolate or get themselves tested. It is not clear what kind of personal information will be shared in the advisory.

Singapore: Help speed up contact tracing with TraceTogether [Link]

• Using Bluetooth, TraceTogether identifies other nearby phones with the app installed. It then tracks when you are in close proximity with these other persons, including timestamps.
• If a person is diagnosed with the virus, they can allow the Ministry of Health to access the data in the app to identify close contacts. Data is stored in the phone itself for 21 days and is not accessed unless the individual is identified as a “close contact”.

United Kingdom: NHSX is in the process of developing a contact tracing app to monitor the spread of Coronavirus cases [Link]

• NHSX (the digital arm of UK’s National Health Services) is looking at whether app-based solutions might be helpful in tracking and managing coronavirus, and we have assembled expertise from inside and outside the organization to do this as rapidly as possible
• In the UK the government has been quick to call in tech giants, including Google, Microsoft, and Palantir, to help the National Health Service determine where resources need to be sent during the pandemic. While the European Commission has been leaning on regional telcos to hand over user location data to carry out coronavirus tracking — albeit in aggregated and anonymized form.
• “Our analysis suggests that almost half of coronavirus transmissions occur in the very early phase of infection, before symptoms appear, so we need a fast and effective mobile app for alerting people who have been exposed.
• Professor Fraser said the concept of the app is “very simple”.
  - “If you are diagnosed with coronavirus, the people you’ve recently come into contact with will be messaged advising them to isolate,” he adds.
  - “If this mobile app is developed and deployed rapidly, and enough people opt-in to use such an approach, we can slow the spread of coronavirus and mitigate against devastating human, economic and social impacts.”
• “At the current stage of the epidemic, contact tracing can no longer be performed effectively by public health officials in the UK, and many countries across Europe, as coronavirus is spreading too rapidly,” he said.
• “Our research of early data from other countries shows that patient histories are incomplete — we don’t know the details of the person we sat next to on the bus. We need an instantaneous and anonymous digital solution to confirm our person-to-person contact history.”

Poland launches app to track people in coronavirus quarantine. [Link] — This is strictly to keep people in quarantine who’ve traveled from abroad in the last 14 days

• The app will routinely ask users to share their location which must match with their GPS location. They will also be asked to take a photo at the location and complete a “task” within 20 minutes of receiving the message from the government. If this is not done, action could be taken against the person by authorities.
• The app will also allow users to send requests for meals, groceries, and psychological help which must be approved by authorities before people are allowed to step out of quarantine. It will also give access to information related to COVID-19, and to directly contact services supervising quarantined people.

Israel: Health Ministry launches phone app to help prevent the spread of coronavirus. [Link]

• Hamagen App — Play Store — Link
• ‘Hamagen’ tracks a user’s whereabouts and then compares them to known movements of those diagnosed with COVID-19, to check if paths crossed within the previous 14 days. [Official]
• From Play Store description: The “Protector” app crosses your location with the corona patients’ path maps verified and updates you in case of overlap. The app runs in the background and your information stays on your device only.

More news on such apps from different nations:

• USA: Link
• Taiwan: Link.
• Thailand: Link.
• Hong Kong: Link. Hong Kong is putting electronic wristbands on arriving passengers to enforce coronavirus quarantine. [This is sci-fi, next level.]

More Ideas:

• Assign a status to people using the app: Green (safe), Yellow (self-quarantine, the likelihood of having COVID-19), Orange (High chances of having COVID-19, must be tested), Red (tested positive, quarantine under medical care).
• Get the contact tracing app compulsorily installed in the phones of health-care professionals, people with COVID-19, police force, people who are moving from places to place to run the essential services, and their family members.

What may change:

• A reliable contact tracing may help us find out the hotspots and safe-zones.
• Data backed testing for Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases since we’ve got limited tests to perform in a very limited time.
• The safe-zones then can be isolated (walled: restriction of movement in-out for people) without strict internal lockdown (will enable economic movement in those places, reduce panic and stress, and it will enable judicious allocation of resources by Govt. to contain the spread of Coronavirus).
• The hot-zones can get widespread testing with strict quarantine rules and lockdown.
• Eases the nationwide lockdown. Enables movement of people, goods, in-turn economy for millions of people.

• https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
• https://www.mohfw.gov.in/
• WHO COVID-19 Situation Dashboard: Link | https://www.who.int/
• List of COVID-19 Apps — Wikipedia.