New COVID-19 Tracking App May Find 'Hotspots' Across America

A new nonprofit phone app is designed to help epidemiologists track COVID-19 symptoms across the United States in real time, according to U.S. News & World Report . The goal of the "COVID Symptom Tracker" is to quickly identify hotspots that could be helped by the swift dispatch of medical supplies or lockdowns, as well as pinpoint regions where efforts to reopen the economy sooner rather than later might be the most sensible approach. Researchers at Harvard University, Stanford University, and King's College London created the app, which also might yield insight into the pathway of symptoms — and help researchers to better understand why and how rapidly some persons develop serious illness while others stabilize and remain mild. Harvard Medical School Professor Andrew Chan said the COVID Symptom Tracker "is not a contact tracing app, in that we don't collect information about where people have been or who they have been in touch with." Maura Iversen, Dean of Sacred Heart University's College of Health Professions, is confident that the app will be widely accepted. "Americans will feel comfortable and be willing to share," she states, "information as we are pulling together to try to tackle this pandemic."