Covid-19: Morocco Developing Mobile Phone App to Prevent Contagion

Moroccan computing engineers are busy working on a mobile phone App that will help health authorities to identify and track people who have been exposed to the coronavirus.

The Moroccan Digital Development Agency has been commissioned by the government to design and deploy this tracing app expected to be operational by end of April.

The free app will use Open-Source protocols and will be available on Google Play (Android) and App Store (iOS). It will monitor the interactions among mobile devices anonymously, while respecting the privacy of users.

According to the experts, people in close contact with someone who is infected with a virus are at higher risk of becoming infected themselves, and of potentially infecting others.

The Covid-19 app will help contain the spread of the virus by alerting people at risk and those suspected to have been infected to get tested.

This technology has already proven its efficiency in China, South Korea and Singapore. The contact-tracing works by using a smartphone’s Bluetooth signals to determine if the owner has recently come into contact with others found to be infected with coronavirus.

In Morocco, the novel coronavirus has so far killed 126 people and infected 1,838, while 210 others recovered.

Covid-19 is affecting 210 countries and territories around the world. The number of people infected worldwide with this virus was approaching 2 million Tuesday, with 120,000 deaths.