If Jackson city officials have their way, residents could soon find out if they need to be tested for coronavirus by coughing into their smart phones.
The Lumumba administration recently launched a COVID-19 symptom tracker.
The tracker went live in mid-April. It allows residents to fill out a few simple questions, which will help determine whether they should be tested for the virus and provides information on where individuals could seek help.
Data collected from the app will be used by officials to map out virus hotspots, so resources, such as tests, can be deployed to those areas.
“This allows us to meet people where they area,” said Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.
The city, in collaboration with the Jackson-Hinds Comprehensive Health Center and the state, has purchased some 12,000 COVID-19 test kits, some of which will be made available to test the general public.
In addition to testing, Lumumba said the tracker could help the city determine which areas could safely be reopened for business. For weeks, the city has been in lockdown mode, under the mayor’s stay-at-home executive order.
The order, which will be in place until April 30, shuttered non-essential businesses and required individuals to remain at home unless they’re buying food, seeking medical treatment, or seeking other essential services.
Jackson has been under a stay-at-home order since April 3.
Meanwhile, the city is working on an artificial intelligence component of the app, which officials hope eventually will be able to tell whether residents have COVID by listening to a recording of their cough.
“We’re actually training an artificial intelligence tool to learn the difference between a COVID-19 cough and other coughs,” said Chief Administrative Officer Robert Blaine. “At the end of the app, you can record yourself coughing and the goal is that as the A.I. learns, it will be able to determine if people need to be referred for testing.”
According to an April 22 article published by Harvard Medical School, symptoms of the virus include a dry cough.
By comparison, individuals with the common cold, the flu, bronchitis or pneumonia usually have wet coughs that produce phlegm, according the Harvard school.
“The difference in cough tone could help us track symptoms more closely,” Blaine said.
It was unclear if one could determine whether one might have COVID by the sound of one’s cough. Officials with the University of Mississippi Medical Center and the MSDH were unaware of the tracker when asked about it by the Sun.
The tracker was created in a partnership between the city and data company Chrysalis Partners. The city brought on the Denver tech company for $7,000.
Other symptom trackers have been launched across the country. However, most have been put in place by states, rather than cities.
On April 16, the Oklahoma State Department of Health announced that it was launching a symptom tracker and data dashboard with the help of Google and Looker, a business software and data analytics firm.
As of April 24, more than 4,400 people had used that state’s tracker, according to its website.
The Colorado Department of Health launched its tracker on April 17. Data from that tracker is being shared with municipalities in the state to better understand when and where outbreaks are occurring.
Mount Sinai Health System in New York had also launched a web-based app to track the spread of the virus in the Big Apple.
Private companies and academic institutions have also launched apps.
For more information, log onto symptomcollector.com/jacksonms.
