A way to track COVID-19 will be in the palm of your hands very soon thanks to researchers at The University at Buffalo. Researchers say they have created an app called Pocketcare+. The app will also be able to track when and how the disease spreads.

"The more people that use this app, the more effective it will be," Chunming Qiao said, the department chair of Computer Science and Engineering at SUNY.

To slow the spread of COVID-19, people who test positive for the virus are asked to conduct "contact tracing,” which is retracing the people and places they recently interacted with. Pocketcare+ is designed to detect both direct and indirect virus transmission.

"Fomites, the patient has the virus, touches a surface or a doorknob, whatever, someone else comes in touches the same place, touches the face and then they’re infected,” Qiao said.

Here’s how the app works: when a user downloads the app, Bluetooth technology will be taking record of each time the user is in within a short distance of others who also have the app. Your phone’s GPS will mark the location of every encounter, which will act as a "heads up" to be cautious in that particular area.

"If the infectious person visited a place, at say, noon time, and then left, then I went to the same place 10 minutes after the infectious person left, I could still get that virus through indirect contact," Qiao said.

Researchers at UB say this project stems from five years ago when they created an app called "pocket-care" that tracked the spread of the flu. Professor Qiao says his team is working on making sure the app also has a focus on ensuring privacy of users.

"We only collect non-personal information, your zip code, your age group; we also ask users for permission to turn on their Bluetooth, which is necessary for the app to work,” said Qiao.

Qiao says the app will be available for anyone to download in May.