The COVID Symptom Tracker app, developed by the health firm ZOE and King’s College London, is now available in Sweden. Rather than feeding information back to the UK, data collected in Sweden will be analysed by Lund University and handled in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The app first launched in the UK in March before being made available in the United States. The UK edition of the website hosts new research based on data from the app as well as interactive maps that are updated daily. The maps show how many respondents there were in each area and what percentage of the area could have symptomatic COVID-19. The U.S. website has less research and no interactive map, it’s not clear if this is because it hasn’t gained enough users yet.
According to Lund University, the app has been launched in Sweden with the following goals in mind:
- To find out which parts of Sweden have a high risk of infection.
- To find out which behavioural factors raise a person’s risk of adverse outcomes and how underlying health conditions affect risk.
- To find out how quickly the virus is spreading in different parts of Sweden.
According to the statement put out by Lund University, the app will also be coming to India soon. It’s not known which institutions will be partnering with ZOE in the country but the huge population will certainly make for interesting results. The hotter weather in India will also be able to reveal if the temperature has an impact on COVID-19 spread.
You can learn more about the app by heading over to the COVID Symptom Tracker website, you should also be aware that the app is not currently listed in the Google Play Store when searching for anything ‘COVID’ or ‘Coronavirus’ related, instead you should search for ‘joinzoe’ or get a direct link from the website - this is due to a whitelisting technique employed by Google.
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