Researchers from some of the top companies and institutions of the world have developed an app that can help in curbing the spread of coronavirus.
The app, known as Private Kit: Safe Paths, tracks the location of a person and the people with whom he/she have come in contact.
It then shares the encrypted location data between phones in the network in such a way that it does not go through a central authority.
This lets users see if they may have come in contact with someone carrying the coronavirus without knowing who it might be.
An app user who tests positive can also choose to share location data with health officials, who can then make it public.
As per reports, the app was was developed by researchers from MIT and Harvard along with software engineers from companies such as Facebook and Uber.
The team was led by an associate professor of MIT Ramesh Raskar.
According to Raskar, the app’s -grained tracking approach, which would allow specific locations to be closed off and disinfected, is better than blanket shutdowns, which are socially and economically disruptive.