US university developing COVID-19 tracker inspired by Apple's 'Find My' feature

A team led by MIT researchers and including experts from many institutions is developing a system that would allow tracing contacts of COVID-19 patients without hampering privacy of an individual. According to a release by MIT, system relies on short-range Bluetooth signals emitted from people’s smartphones, kwn as 'chirps' and n scan database to see if any of those chirps match ones picked up by ir phones. If re’s a match, a tification will inform that person that y may have been exposed to virus and will include information from public health authorities on next steps to take. 

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system is inspired by Apple's 'Find My' feature that alrey has ability to vertise its presence to or devices via Bluetooth. Apple’s “Find My” feature, for example, uses chirps from a lost iPhone or MacBook to catch attention of or Apple devices, helping owner of lost device to eventually find it. 

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"Find My inspired this system. If my phone is lost, it can start brocasting a Bluetooth signal that’s just a random number; it’s like being in middle of ocean and waving a light. If someone walks by with Bluetooth enabled, ir phone doesn’t kw anything about me; it will just tell Apple, ‘Hey, I saw this light," Marc Zissman, associate he of MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Cyber Security and Information Science Division and co-principal investigator of project was quoted as saying on university website.

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Coronavirus outbreak

dely coronavirus infection has claimed more than 95,700 lives across world and has infected over 16,05,000 people globally since it first broke out in December 2019. China was most affected country until last month before Italy and Spain surpassed it to record most number of deaths anywhere in world due to COVID-19. United States, France, United Kingdom, and Iran have also overtaken China in terms of COVID-19 death toll. virus is believed to have originated from a seafood market in China's Wuhan city, epicentre of disease, where animals were reportedly being tred illegally.

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(Im Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT)