Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Apple, Google To Allow Smartphone Users Who Test Positive To Alert People They May Have Come In Contact With
In one of the most far-ranging attempts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, Apple and Google said they were building software into smartphones that would tell people if they were recently in contact with someone who was infected with it. The technology giants said they were teaming up to release the tool within several months, building it into the operating systems of the billions of iPhones and Android devices around the world. That would enable the smartphones to constantly log other devices they come near, enabling what is known as “contact tracing” of the disease. People would opt in to use the tool and voluntarily report if they became infected. (Nicas and Wakabayashi, 4/10)
Two of the tech industry's biggest competitors are teaming up on a project they say will help alert people who may have had contact with someone diagnosed with the novel coronavirus. Apple and Google in May will release the first step of a two-part project focused on contact tracing, a process used in public health to identify people who were in close contact or proximity to someone infected with a virus, such as COVID-19. (Cohen, 4/10)
K.J. Seung is surprised to be hiring and training new workers in Boston. His public health nonprofit, Partners in Health, specializes in helping the poorest people in developing nations — tracking down contacts of Ebola patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone; running child health and HIV clinics in Haiti; and operating tuberculosis control programs in Peru. But now it is advertising for 500 people to help do what’s known as contact tracing to try to control Covid-19 in Massachusetts. (Fox, 4/13)
Preliminary findings released this week from a new effort to track the spread of the coronavirus through sewage data suggests that one metro region in Massachusetts that's reported fewer than 500 positive tests actually may actually have exponentially more. Last month, Massachusetts lab Biobot Analytics launched a partnership with Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brigham and Women's Hospital to use its technology pro bono to map and analyze the spread of the virus through wastewater... Based on wastewater data, Biobot gave an estimate of anywhere from 2,300 to over 115,000 infected persons within the area sampled, though only 446 cases in the area had been reported. (Francescani and Anoruo, 4/11)
