Covid symptom tracker could help stop spread

A coronavirus symptom tracker which can be downloaded by anyone onto their smartphone could provide important information to help stop the spread of the disease.

The Covid-19 sympton tracker app, developed by King’s College London, Guys & St Thomas’ hospitals and private nutrition data company Zoe Global, has been used by more than 2.7m people in the UK.

The way it works is simple. People fill in a profile about themselves and mark the symptoms they have or haven’t had.

Currently, the data for Herefordshire shows there are 3,288 contributors in the county with 0.6% of people estimated with symptomatic Covid.

Martin Brocklehurst, a founding instigator of the European Citizen Science Association, says the app could prove to be a useful warning system if there is an upsurge in the disease somewhere.

“The Covid-19 symptom tracker app shows how important input from local people can be to citizen science programmes that truly tell governments what is happening on the ground as this virus impacts all our lives.

“No other survey in the UK comes close to the statistical sample size obtained by Kings College London through their deployment of the Covid-19 tracker app.

“It provides a level of granularity on the rate of infection which can also be used by ordinary people to decide where they shop to reduce their risk of exposure to the Covid-19 virus.

“That is in addition to the data on how the virus affects people’s symptoms in the early phases of the disease, when it is so hard to spot.”

For more info on the app visit https://covid.joinzoe.com