CovTracer

Halting the COVID19 epidemic requires rapid identification of the contacts wth whom the infected individuals had contact with, within the previous days and weeks. This allows decontamination of locations the infected individual has visited, plus informing and/or communicating with perhaps infected individuals. With almost half of the world’s population carrying a device capable of GPS tracking, location trails – timestamped logs of an individual’s location – can be created. By checking the user’s location trails, one can identify other citizens who have been in close proximity to the diagnosed carrier and, if the exposed users take appropriate action, reduce the spread of the infectious disease. The first version of the mobile app targets mainly employees and workers who need to work outside and cannot stay at home. This includes policemen, doctors and nurses, firemen, people working in important utilities (electricity, water, internet, etc.). It also targets people who need to leave home to go to supermarket or pharmacy. For the rest of Cyprus population, we strongly advice them to stay at home in order to stop the spreading of the epidemics. CovTracer app is based on the MIT project safepaths.