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UVA Students Offer Contact Tracing App

UVA

To help stop the spread of COVID, states are now hiring thousands of people to help trace contacts between healthy and infected people, but four Virginia students have developed a tracing app that could make that unnecessary.

Rohan Taneja and Emerson Berlik have loved computers since high school, so when the two UVA students first heard about the new corona virus, they saw a way to help – developing an app that allows mobile phones to make a note each time they come within six feet of another Bluetooth signal.

“We also wanted to consider privacy,” says Berlik, so the information is stored only on your phone.

“Instead of keeping all this data in a database, we have on each individual’s phone a list of users that you’ve run into," he explains.  "When you’re symptomatic or you’ve tested positive, you can go back and inform all these other users.”

Actually, the phone will send an anonymous message as soon as you change your status from COVID negative to COVID positive.  Unfortunately, Taneja says, they are unable to distribute the app through Apple.

“Apple has restrictions around who gets to publish what. If you’re making a health app and you’re not a health institution or a government institution or a school, you cannot publish a COVID-19-related app.”

But they and two other friends from high school are pressing ahead – making the app available directly to friends, family, schools and businesses through their website

Sandy Hausman is Radio IQ's Charlottesville Bureau Chief