Alvarez Technology Group’s Luis Alvarez Talks COVID-19 Contact Tracing On Power Talk Radio
Alvarez Technology Group’s very own CEO Luis Alvarez joined host Mark Carbonaro on Power Talk Radio to discuss how businesses and governments around the world are learning to track and prevent the spread of COVID-19 through a method known as “contact tracing”.
The COVID-19 pandemic may not be over yet, but states and small governments across the country are already starting to relax shelter-in-place orders, and are planning for the time when nonessential businesses can open their doors again.
In order to do so safely and effectively, businesses will need to adopt certain social distancing practices (curbside service, contactless payment, etc.) as the new standards. But there’s more that can be done, such as “contact tracing”.
This is what Alvarez Technology Group CEO Luis Alvarez joined host Mark Carbonaro on a recent episode of Power Talk Radio to talk about. Check out the full discussion:
How Does Contact Tracing Work?
Luis and Mark discussed how nations including Australia and China have started using “contact tracing” apps, which assign bar codes to users to log their contact with other users. This app can then provide detailed information to healthcare authorities and government officials in the event that a user is infected with COVID-19.
“They were able to use that to really reduce the spread and get better metrics on how it was spreading, so they could get out of shelter-in-place, and open up their economy a lot faster,” says Luis. “It’s just one element of how you could get to the point where we can all leave our homes, and stores and restaurants can start opening up again.”
Unfortunately, while the app is popular in other parts of the world, it hasn’t caught on in the US due to concerns over privacy, and how the collected data will be used. In order to be effective, the app needs to be in use by 15 people per million in the area, which is a high requirement for densely populated areas like Los Angeles.
“The more people that do this, the better the data the authorities have, the more likely they are to say ‘we have enough people doing that that we can be less fearful of what we don’t know’,” says Luis.
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