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Apple and Google will temporarily forget their differences and collaborate to create the necessary tools so that an app on the phone can tell you if you have been close to someone diagnosed with Covid-19 and, therefore, you must exercise extreme caution and isolate yourself completely.

Both companies have announced the agreement through a press release highlighting the importance of creating tools that respect the privacy of users.

Although in some countries, such as South Korea or China, applications of this style have been used to analyze and control the expression of the virus, its use poses problems because it provides governments or private companies with exact data on the location of people.

Apple and Google have started working on a joint standard that instead of the GPS position uses the Bluetooth connection of the phones to know if someone has been close to another person previously diagnosed with Covid-19.

As the possibilities of transmission of the Covid-19 increase by contact or personal approach, these apps could be useful to elaborate the traceability of the virus and alert people who could be infected but have not yet developed symptoms.

This standard, which includes the continuous encryption of information, will serve to create an API - a set of anchors to the operating system that allow apps to perform certain advanced functions - that third-party developers can use to create the final applications.

These applications can be distributed both in Google stores (for Android phones) and Apple (for iPhone), but will be interoperable. This means that apps, both on Android platforms and on iPhone phones, will be able to recognize each other, a key function for them to be truly effective.

"Everyone at Apple and Google believes there has never been a more important time to work together," said spokesmen for both companies.

In May the tool that will allow Android and iPhone applications to talk to each other will be ready. The traceability API based on Bluetooth technology will take "a few more months", but until then governments and medical organizations will be able to use their own systems to determine the location of users and their possible contact with infected people.

Such applications will be necessary until a viable vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus , responsible for the pandemic, is developed, especially as governments abandon extraordinary quarantine measures and allow the free movement of people.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Coronavirus
  • Covid 19

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