Wellington | New Zealand border officials on Thursday began testing an app designed to detect the coronavirus before the user shows symptoms.
The app, called “elarm,” connects to smartwatches or mobile devices that measure athletic performance and uses artificial intelligence to check variables such as heart rate and temperature to look for warning signs of COVID-19.
The developer of this app, Datamine, based in New Zealand, says it can detect the virus with 90% accuracy up to three days before symptoms such as cough, difficulty breathing and fatigue appear.
The Ministry of Health has said that this system will allow early warning of border workers who are most exposed to the coronavirus. Indeed, the archipelago currently records almost no local cases, the only people tested positive for COVID-19 being travelers arriving from abroad.
“If the elarm application is what we expect, it could provide a quick warning to our staff,” said Shayne Hunter, deputy director at the Department of Health.
“This means they can take the appropriate steps, like going into self-isolation and getting tested for COVID-19,” she added.
New Zealand has largely succeeded in containing the coronavirus pandemic, with just 26 COVID-19-related deaths per five million people.
The rare local cases generally relate to people working at the border and having worked with travelers who, on their return from abroad, were placed in quarantine.
According to Hunter, around 500 cross-border workers will take part in the one-month trial of this application.
This technology uses artificial intelligence to establish, for each user, a point of reference in terms of health status and alert them in the event of physiological changes corresponding to COVID-19.
Elarm is already available to individuals for a monthly subscription and some companies, such as US mining giant Newcrest, have made it available to their employees.
However, the trial launched in New Zealand appears to be the first conducted by a ministry with people working at the border.
“Although this type of technology is available to consumers in other countries, the health ministry is not aware of any other country that is experimenting with it with its border staff,” a spokeswoman told AFP.