The World Health Organization will launch a Covid-19 app for countries that don't have the means to develop their own. This was stated by Bernardo Mariano, WHO Chief Information Officer, in an interview with Reuters and published online, stating that the application will be released by the end of May.
The app, which is supposed to be bluetooth-based, will ask people about their symptoms and offer guidance on possible infection. Other information, such as the tests to be done, will be customized according to the user's country.
The application, which will be released on digital stores globally, can be adopted by any government that can add its functionality and release its version in the app stores, explained Mariano dell'Oms.
Numerous countries are accelerating in contact tracing technologies, with the United Kingdom, Australia and India already testing their app. WHO expects its application to attract interest in countries such as South America and Africa, where the number of cases is increasing and resources, technology and engineers may be lacking to develop an app.
"We would leave behind those countries that are unable to provide an app and have fragile health systems," added Mariano.
Engineers and technicians, including some who worked at Google and Microsoft, volunteered to develop the new app with the 'open-source' source code, visible to everyone on the GitHub developer platform.