Now that the strictest period of the lockdown has passed in most countries, citizens are starting to resume their activity little by little, but the risk of a new outbreak of the Coronavirus forces us to be very cautious.

To give people back their mobility and keep them safe at the same time, a young team of German and Indian software developers has built the CoviFight app solution.

CoviFight is not just a contact tracing application. It is a 3-tier solution containing a user's app, a provider's app, and an official portal. This solution will:

•  Alert users to the risks of catching the virus if they were in contact with an infected person within the past three weeks, by using machine learning and social networking analysis
•  Identify the public place or the transport mode (be it a bus, a metro, or a McDonald's restaurant) that needs sterilisation.
•  Inform the medical system accurately about the spread of infection.
•  Generate a map with hotspots for what places have virus traces so that people can prevent travel to and from these places and authorities can sterilise or lockdown these places efficiently rather than having a complete lockdown of a country.

No GDPR issues; it respects user privacy

Although it requires the Bluetooth of a user's phone, CoviFight makes sure that the confidentiality and privacy of every individual are secured and cannot be compromised. Data is encrypted using a secret key, and no one can view it without your permission. It only traces the past data of positively tested patients. This way, CoviFight also meets the GDPR compliance. The encryption algorithms meet the standards of the leading social networking apps existing in the market.

Compatible with other contact tracing apps

If there is already a contact tracing application launched in a region, the second and third-tier can be integrated without modifying the original app at all.  Currently, the global market is saturated with many products claiming to provide efficient contact tracing, but not a single app in the industry is capable of detecting aggregation points (stores and public transports).

This can be done with the provider's app, especially designed for aggregation points like shops, restaurants and public transport and always synchronised with the nearby user app. This interface is key for the detection of infection points, be it a stationary workplace or a moving vehicle. If a restaurant installed CoviFight and had an infected customer in the past 15 days, all the customers who entered after the positive tested patient would be alerted, and hence the restaurant can be sterilised.

Meanwhile, only the region's medical system can update a person's status over the official's portal, and the authenticity of the app is maintained, hence preventing false positives or self-reporting, which might lead to falsification of records.

Using CoviFight people can move around while being alerted about their status. They can stay away from the virus and be free from the worry of their privacy maintenance at the same time.

#EUvsVirus 

This solution was awarded in the EUvsVirus Pan European Hackathon, organised by the European Innovation Council to counter COVID-19 pandemic with more than 9k participants and 2000 teams. CoviFight was selected as the second-best solution in the Real time Communication and Prevention Challenge and is sponsored by META Group with a 1000 EUR prize.

META staff participated actively as mentors in this Hackathon, working closely with the entrepreneur's teams. "We joined the hackathon and were very happy to contribute with a prize. We believed it was a good way to be engaged and to show how mature companies like us, start-ups and institutions like the EC can collaborate and impact, even in time of emergency," said Andrea Di Anselmo, VP of META Group and one of the jury members in the EUvsVirus Hackathon.

Find out more about CoviFight