The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning to launch an app this month to help people in under-resourced countries to determine whether they have the novel coronavirus.
As per a Reuters report, the app will ask people about their health conditions and give information to them about whether they might be suffering from COVID-19.
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It will then provide information to a person on how he/she may get tested for coronavirus in the place he/she is staying.
WHO chief information officer Bernardo Mariano said that the organization is considering a Bluetooth-based contact tracing feature too.
Although the WHO will also release its app on app stores globally, Mariano said that any government will be able to take the app’s underlying technology, add features and release its own version on app stores.
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The development of the app comes at a time when India and some other countries have released their own apps to help people stop getting infected by coronavirus.
The value is really for countries that do not have anything,” Reuters quoted Mariano as saying.
Engineers and designers, including some who previously worked at Alphabet Inc’s Google and Microsoft Corp, have been volunteering for weeks to develop the new app with about five of them overseeing the process.
They are designing it open-source on the hosting service GitHub, meaning code is open to public input.