Stop the Spread: A COVID-19 Contact Tracing App
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Project Abstract
Imagine getting infected with covid-19 and not even knowing it. That’s the reality that many of us have lived with. In order for us to keep each other safe from COVID-19 we need a way to contact trace, find out who a person with COVID-19 may have spread the disease to, and we need to do it in a way that’s scalable. That’s where our app Stop the Spread comes in.
This app is cross-platform, which means it will work on both Android and iOS mobile operating systems. To start, the user is able to create an account and can choose to share their location. There are several pages the user can access once registered. One of which is Settings, where the user can report their infection status (Negative, Symptomatic, Positive). Once the user shares their location the app will track where they have been and if they report positive, the app will go through their location history and inform other users that were in close contact with the infected user. Another page is Map, which will display a heatmap of other registered users along with a specific color that represents their infection status (green = negative, yellow = symptomatic, red = positive). This allows users and contact tracers to identify the density of different infection statuses and their location or avoid going near locations with such densities. The next page is Contacts, which will display a possible contacts list that describes whether they were in close contact with other registered users that reported positive. This allows the user to quickly get tested and quarantine, and contact tracers can quickly identify and locate the positive contacts. The last page is Resources, where users can quickly access the CDC website that contains valuable information about nearby cases, COVID-19 statistics, vaccine information, and more.
Our project will be a boon to public health by providing a scalable method of contact tracing by tracking its user's location data and self-reported infection statuses and showing users where high-risk areas might be so they can avoid those areas.