Take a look at these Korean apps helping people avoid areas infected by the coronavirus

Mary Meisenzahl

Mar 2, 2020, 23:01 IST

Take a look at these Korean apps helping people avoid areas infected by the coronavirus

Corona Map plots the locations where people known to have had COVID-19 have been, to make avoiding these areas easier.

The coronavirus outbreak that originated in China has killed 3,000 people and infected more than 89,000, according to recent totals.
The virus has spread to at least 60 other countries, and killed 125 people outside of mainland China. South Korea has the most known infections outside of China.
Some apps in South Korea track outbreaks, and have been among the most downloaded apps in the Google Play Store over the last week.
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The death toll of the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China, is now more than 3,000, and the virus has infected more than 89,000 people worldwide, most of them in China.

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On January 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared it a global health emergency. The virus has disrupted travel worldwide, leading to flight cancellations, quarantines, and other breakdowns in movement. The virus has spread to 60 countries and is now on every continent except Antarctica. Some experts have said it could become a permanent virus that humans face, akin to the seasonal flu, though health officials have stopped short of calling it a pandemic.

With more than 3,000 cases, South Korea has the most confirmed cases of the coronavirus disease, COVID-19, of any country besides China. On Sunday, the country reported 813 new cases, a record in South Korea. In response to the virus, some developers have created apps that track known information about COVID-19 and outbreak locations.

Take a look at two of the apps here.

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Corona 100m was launched on February 11, and has since been downloaded over one million times, CNN Business reported.

The app collects data from public government info including the Korea Centers for Disease Control to show the date a patient was diagnosed with COVID-19, along with the person's nationality, age, gender, and where they visited.

If a person using the app comes within 100 meters, or about 328 feet, of a place where a person carrying the virus has been, they get a push notification warning — the app's namesake.

Developer Bae Won-Seok said that the app was growing, with 20,000 downloads every hour, at one point crashing its servers with too many downloads.

Corona Map, which also tracks the locations of people know to have COVID-19, was the second-most-downloaded app in Korea on Wednesday.

Like Corona 100m, Corona Map plots the locations where people known to have had COVID-19 have been, to make avoiding these areas easier.

Developer Lee Jun-young told CNN that he created the app because he found that the official government data was difficult to understand.

These precautions in South Korea are in addition to measures by government and health officials, including efficient "drive-thru" testing that takes less than 10 minutes.

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