Unless you’re an alien, you must be familiar with the most deadliest disease of the decade – COVID 19 which is caused by the virus known as the Coronavirus. This disease has shaken the world like never before. It has disrupted the whole world. In such times, the government of each and every country of the world has become more strict and has launched some apps to keep track of the cases in the country and to spread right information to the people. We are going to discuss the best Coronavirus app launched in various countries by their government.

Best Coronavirus App For Tracking the Virus

Have a look at the coronavirus app used by various countries to track the virus and update people about related news:

Aarogya Setu (India)

Aarogya Setu is the app launched by the Indian government. The app is meant to track the disease as well as keep the citizens informed about the measures to be taken to control the spread of the disease. It uses GPS and Bluetooth technologies to track the disease. As India is home to many cultures, the cultural languages vary from state to state, therefore the app is available in 11 different languages including English. The app has a chatbot which asks the user a series of questions through which it determines the risk of infection to the user.

The app even shows the data about total cases, deaths and recovery numbers in the ‘COVID Updates’ tab. Now users can even use their e-pass using this app. Some questions regarding issuing and using of e-passes are also answered in the ‘e-pass’ tab. The app is available on both Android and iOS platforms. The user data from the app helps the government keep track and make decisions efficiently. And it is an app launched by the government, so users don’t have to worry about security of their personal details. 

Private Kit: Safe Paths

Private Kit: Safe Paths is a coronavirus app developed by people at MIT and Harvard and some software engineers from Facebook and Uber. This app tracks where users have been and informs them whether or not they’ve knowingly or unknowingly crossed paths with a person infected with the coronavirus. It allows users to decide whether or not to give the permission to access location. The app is available on both Android and iOS platforms.

Coronavirus Australia

Coronavirus Australia is an app dedicated to track the coronavirus in Australia launched by the Australian government. It has an ‘Advice’ section which informs about how to keep personal hygiene, how to protect others around you, how to get self isolated, etc. It provides a ‘News’ section which gets updated with all the news related to Coronavirus in Australia. It also has a ‘Symptoms’ section which explains the symptoms of coronavirus. It offers a chatbot which helps calculate the risk of infection to user by asking some questions. It also allows users to register their isolation. It provides all the resources related to the disease. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.

Test Yourself Goa (India)

Test Yourself Goa is a health and fitness app developed by the Goa Ministry of Health in collaboration with Innovaccer, India. It is India’s first automated self-assessment app. It includes self-assessment test which helps user know about the risk of disease in him/her. It does so by asking a series of questions which helps predict the risk of infection in that person. It includes a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page which answers some questions related to the disease. If you’re at the risk of getting the disease, it’ll guide you and tell you what to do next, whom to contact, etc.

Test Yourself Puducherry (India)

Test Yourself Puducherry is a tracking app developed by the Government of Puducherry in collaboration with Innovaccer, India. It also provides a test to calculate the risk of infection in the user by asking questions about any illness history, age, gender, travel history, etc. Users should know that this is not an actual medical test. It is available in multiple languages. It gives you proper advice on what to do next if you’re having a high risk of infection.

COVA Punjab (India)

COVA Punjab is a coronavirus tracking app developed by Government of Punjab to provide the citizens of the state with right information regarding the spread and prevention of the disease. The app has real-time dashboard for the state of Punjab, India and global statistics. It gives information about the hospitals dedicated to coronavirus in Punjab.  It also gives some preventive measures, travelling instructions, and general awareness about the disease. The app also has a symptom checker which helps user know the risk of infection in him/her. It includes the FAQs page as well as all the helpline information. It helps users get instant notifications regarding updates from the government, advisories and other instructions. The app is available for both Android and iOS platforms.

Corona Watch (India)

Corona Watch is a coronavirus tracking app developed by the government of Karnataka. It is used to show the location of Coronavirus affected regions in the state of Karnataka as well some other regions around the state. And if the users happen to be in any of the affected regions, then they could call the given helpline numbers right away. Users can also know about the nearest hospitals or testing centers which are dedicated for the treatment of disease. Information regarding the disease, its symptoms, some preventive measures, etc are also mentioned within the app.

Trace Together (Singapore)

TraceTogether is a community app developed to support existing efforts made by the Government of Singapore to combat the spread of coronavirus. It adopts a community-driven approach where the device which installs the app exchange the proximity information whenever an app detects another app which has installed the same app. It uses Bluetooth Relative Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) between devices across time to approximate the proximity and duration of an encounter between the two users.

If a person is tested positive with coronavirus, then his activity of last 14 days is checked and then all the people who had been near this person are informed about the same with some guidelines such as performing self isolation, being away from people as long as possible, inform the officials if develop symptoms of coronavirus, etc. It is available for both Android and iOS devices.

How We Feel (US)

How We Feel app is developed to keep an eye on general user’s health. It asks for user’s age, gender, postal code, and any health symptoms they might be having. This data helps scientists, doctors and public health officials to research about and help stop the spread of the disease. These researches are done at the profound institutions including MIT, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Institute of Quantitative Social Science, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. It is developed in collaboration with Pinterest, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Alex’s Lemonade Stand, Feeding America, and CHARTIO.

COVID Symptom Tracker (UK)

The COVID Symptom Tracker was developed by doctors and scientists at King’s College London and St. Thomas’ Hospital in collaboration with a health science company – ZOE Global Ltd. The app asks simple questions to the user such as the age, gender, health symptoms (if any), any health complications (if any), etc. This data is then used for research purposes which could help prevent the spread of the virus altogether. It also informs about the high risk areas, how fast is the virus spreading, etc. The app is available for both Android and iOS devices.

HaMagen (Israel)

HaMagen (“the shield” in Hebrew) is an application that is designed to protect health and prevent the further spread of coronavirus in Israel. It is developed by the Ministry of Health – Israel.  The app is free to download from Google’s Play Store or the App Store. The app will send users relevant information. If you come in contact or were knowingly/unknowingly nearby a positive identified person, then the app will give you info about the time and place where that happened and users will be able to accept, review or reject the notification.

Coronika (Germany)

Coronika is a kind of diary app. Users have to update and maintain that list/diary regularly. The diary will include data such as persons you recently came in contact with, date and location. Users can keep a list of close contacts which can be used in case of emergency. The app gives hygiene tips as notifications in order to remind users for keeping themselves and their surroundings extremely clean. The app also updates users with true news and data related to the disease. The app is available on both Android and iOS devices. Coronika is available in 17 languages such as English, German, Italian, Chinese, French, Russian, Japanese, Turkish, etc.

COVID Watch (USA)

COVID Watch is also a coronavirus app which is still in its development stage. It was initially started as a forum post in February’20 led by researchers at Stanford University and University of Waterloo. Now the group includes many part-time volunteers and advisors from around the world. Even you can enroll for becoming a volunteer if you’ve necessary skills. Just go to link given inside. The app uses only users’ Bluetooth and not GPS because they found some privacy tradeoffs by using GPS. The app, just like other apps will warn users if they came in contact with someone who has the risk of infection or someone who is positively tested for COVID 19. This app aims at empowering its users by keeping their personal data secure. Even the government won’t have access to user’s data on this app. They have collaborated with MIT’s SafePaths and CoEpi. The app is expected to launch initially in only USA in the mid-April.

CoEpi (USA)

CoEpi is a community building apps for anonymous Bluetooth-based contact tracking, exposure matching and symptoms alerting inorder to address the spread of COVID 19 as well as other transmissible illnesses such as cold and flu. CoEpi is collaborating with many similar Bluetooth based tracking apps from around the world. It is an open-source project so even you can contribute to the project as a volunteer and be part of such great work. The app will alert the users whenever they come close to people who are using the same CoEpi app and are positively tested or are having the risk of infection.

The notified user can dismiss the notification or check for the symptoms (if any) or know about time, place and date of their proximity with the symptomatic user. The user can then opt in for periodic checks wherein the app will alert the user to report symptoms (if any) and report public officials if necessary. The app solely works using Bluetooth. After downloading, there’s no need to register or even create a profile. Only Bluetooth should be kept on all the time to properly use the app. The app will be made available on both Android and iOS platforms.

ito (Germany)

ito can be viewed as ‘Infection Tracking Oppurtunity’ or ‘Infection Termination Operation’ or ‘Integrated Thermodynamic Obscurity’ as given on their website ! Their motto ‘Track infection, not people’ explains in itself the goal of the app. It is a privacy first contact tracing app developed by merger of several teams who participated in the #WirVsVirus Hackathon organized in March 2020. Since then, they’ve collaborated with a lot of companies and healthcare professionals in order to upscale the development. There are no money motives here, everyone works pro-bono and to do something and solve the crisis.

It works using Bluetooth, and recognizes the people in your area and saves that information. If someone happens to be infected in this area, then the app calculates probability of infection to you, and alerts you with the same. It will also recommend what to do next if you have the symptoms. If you are yourself positive, then you’ll be getting a code from the health department which you have to enter in the app, so that other users can be alerted. This app is available only on Android.

Smittestopp (Norway)

Smittestopp is a contact tracing app developed by Simula Reasearch Laboratory in collaboration with Norwegian Institute of Public Health. It also notifies you if you accidentally came close to infected person. The app will give you some recommendations about how to keep yourself safe. The app will also have that information about the time/date and place where you came close to that person. This data will get deleted automatically after 30 days. You can delete it by yourself if you wish to with the delete option. The app is currently only available in Norwegian language.

Conclusion

These are some of the apps developed solely to control the spread of coronavirus. All the apps share the same motto i.e. to stop/lessen/avoid the spread of the coronavirus and stop it from affecting people by informing them about the risk that they possess for the infection. Moreover, epidemiologists from Oxford University recently showed that contact tracing could help play a critical role in enabling regions to come out of lockdown. If 60% people opt to use these apps, it could stop further spread of the virus in addition to implementing the traditional self isolation and keeping in mind the distancing parameter. Users using the apps should strictly follow the protocols and should not enter wrong data, doing so will only lead to inaccuracy and the real goal of the prevention of virus will only become difficult to achieve.

Hope you’ve liked the article. If you have any query related to the article, you can ask us via the comment section below. We will try to answer them as soon as possible. You can also read about best music apps for kids.