COVID Symptom Tracker https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joinzoe.covid_zoe
(26 Mar 2020) LEAD IN:
Researchers in the UK and America are launching a COVID-19 tracking device.
It's a free app which will catalogue in real time how the virus progresses using anonymised information from hundreds of thousands of people.
The aim is to record how fast the virus is spreading in different areas, identify high risk places and to understand who's most at risk by through underlying health conditions and symptoms.
STORY-LINE:
Like many others in the UK, primary teacher Jessica Dobsworth is self-isolating.
But she not just enjoying the sunshine in her back garden, she's joining up to a daily survey which scientists hope will help them conquer the COVID-19 pandemic.
Within a day of launching this week the app called ZOE has been downloaded by over a million people, just in the UK.
Today it launches in the US and potentially millions of people can start feeding their detailed health information into a UK based database via the app.
App users will be asked for details about their postcode, as questions about their age, sex and health. They'll be asked about underlying health conditions like diabetes, asthma and other diseases.
People will also be asked to give information about whether they take drugs, including those which suppress the immune system, whether they have disabilities and are wheelchair users.
The app is the result of a collaboration between a team led by Professor Tim Spector at Kings College London and a science company called ZOE.
To draw the right conclusions scientists rely on users of the app giving accurate information.
Spector says it's been designed to prompt simple, direct answers which give accurate results.
"So people often answer questionnaires rather subjectively but we're asking a very simple straight list of symptoms yes or no, shortness of breath, muscle pain, headache, fever, loss of taste, those kinds of symptoms and if they're just anxious or it's due to allergy, we will see a different combination of those symptoms together and they won't fit with a general pattern around them. So they won't be like an infectious disease. And they'll be very clear once we get the maps of the disease to completely separate them. So with that data, we'll be able to say, if you've got this combination of symptoms, don't worry. If you've got these, they are a sign of the disease," says Spector.
The primary purpose is disease research which is why the app itself is free. ZOE of which Spector is a co-founder says the staff it's dedicated to the project are working at no cost to the public.
Artificial intelligence is being used start looking for patterns and pathways which will allow scientists a more detailed understanding of who is most at risk from the COVID-19 pandemic and why.
ZOE's CEO Jonathan Wolf says the problem facing those tackling the new coronavirus spread is that they don't know enough about who has had it and they're not able to track where it's moving geographically.
Researchers aren't just interested in responses from people displaying symptoms of the virus, they want to track as many people as possible over a period of time.
Wolf says it's essential for as many people as possible to participate for the results to be useful.
Spector is a genetics professor and is known for his decades long research into 15,000 identical and non-identical twins.
Running alongside the data collection from the public is a trial of five thousand twins and their families.
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