To help tracking the spread of COVID-19, Apple and Google are working together to build a tool that will assist in identifying those who may have come in contact with infected individuals. Intended to be opt-in, the tool will use a phone’s Bluetooth to record other phones which have been within a certain distance over a certain period of time, and will share the information with approved aps from public health authorities. In the event a phone’s user is determined to have COVID-19, health authorities would have the ability to identify those who had been in close contact and notify them of their potential exposure.
To perform this tracking, the tool is not expected to use physical location data, but rather to only record the presence of other nearby phones at approximately 5-minute intervals. An anonymous key will also be used by the app to ensure privacy of individuals is preserved.
In the short term, this functionality will require the download of an app by the user, although Apple and Google do intend to eventually build the functionality into the operating systems.
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