COVTrac: Covid-19 Tracker and Social Distancing App

Abstract

In order to break the chain of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection, most countries are taking the help of mobile apps. The existing apps lack the necessary features to address the major issues of detection and alert of social distancing, detection and prevention of large gatherings, easy generation of travel permit during lock down, etc. The existing apps do not provide any solution for alerting user of the users social distance violation. Though many of these apps are being used for contact tracing, they do not say which places the user has visited recently which is a crucial parameter in contact tracing and preventing community spread. Smartphones empowered with the latest technology like Google geo-location and low energy Bluetooth (BLE) with such an app can complement a country’s general Covid-19 control strategies—comprising testing, contact tracing, seclusion and social distancing. In this work, we develop a Covid-19 tracker and social distancing app named as COVTrac, an Android app that uses various capabilities of the smartphone to address these issues with the existing mobile app along with a number of other concerns such as privacy, accurate contact tracing and prevention of socio-physical interactions.