South Korea Develops COVID-19 Monitoring Application

Corona app illustration (jonathang1995 / pixabay)

JAKARTA - South Korea is one of the most technologically literate countries. When the COVID-19 outbreak reached the Korean peninsula, smartphone developers and vendors reacted immediately to create a number of prevention applications from the corona virus.

Through this mobile application, they help their citizens to detect and track outbreaks of the disease early. Some of the applications that have been made have also been ranked at the top of the Google Play online store.

"Downloads are increasing by around 20 thousand every hour," said one of the Corona 100m application developers, Bae Won-Seok, as quoted by CNN.

This application, called Corona Map, allows users to monitor the number of patients who are positively infected with COVID-19. The data displayed includes nationality, gender, age and places where the patient has visited. Even this application can calculate the distance between them and the patient.

According to Google Play Store data, this application has also been installed more than 1 million times since it was launched on 11 February. Bae also revealed that the surge in downloads on the application was triggered by the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea.

Screenshot of the Corona Map app (Google Play Store)

Meanwhile, Corona Map developer Lee Jun-young said that he made the application because he found government data that was difficult to understand. Although health officials have released locations that show where the virus patients are, official information does not always show a visual form.

"I thought it would be better to mark them on a map," said Lee.

The developers also spend their own money as capital to run their applications. In fact, the developers of Corona 100m and Corona Doctor have also asked for donations from their users.

"When I thought that this application could prevent the spread of corona virus patients by advising people not to go to certain places. I felt proud," Lee said while hoping the government could develop its own application using their ideas.

Currently it is informed, there are more than 91,313 cases of the Corona virus recorded worldwide, with infected on every continent except Antarctica. South Korea itself has identified 2,337 cases, which marks that the figure is the largest outside of China.