In the Media

An app developed by MIT researches to help track the spread of Covid-19 will be introduced in several communities around the U.S., reports Paresh Dave for Reuters.

Newsweek reporter Aristos Georgiou writes that researchers from MIT, BioBot Analytics (an MIT startup) and other institutions have found more traces of the coronavirus in wastewater samples than anticipated given confirmed cases. “Having accurate estimates of disease prevalence will help cities plan for what kind of resources they will need when disease prevalence hits its peak,” explains Prof. Eric Alm.

ABC News correspondent Lindsey Davis speaks with MIT researchers about their work developing an inexpensive alternative to a traditional ventilator. “Our goal is to provide the best research information as fast as we can and share that so that partners around the world can scale up and take this through,” explains research scientist Nevan Hanumara.

Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski spotlights how MIT researchers are developing a system that uses smartphone Bluetooth signals to track the spread of Covid-19 while protecting privacy. “Our effort is designed to show that there is a privacy preserving way of doing this kind of automated contact tracing,” explains Principal Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner.

Researchers from MIT, MGH and other institutions are developing a system that automates contact tracing for Covid-19 using smartphone Bluetooth signals while preserving user privacy, reports Zeninjor Enwemeka for WBUR. "It's got to be part of a public health strategy," says Principal Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner of the system. "We're developing this as a tool that we hope can be useful to that process."

Fast Company reporter Katharine Schwab writes that researchers from MIT are building a system that uses random identifiers emitted by smartphone Bluetooth signals to help track the spread of Covid-19. “Instead of an eye in the sky that watches everybody, we want to have the phones that people are carrying around tell how close they’ve been to other people,” says Prof. Ron Rivest.

A new contact tracing method developed by MIT researchers uses Bluetooth signals emitted by smartphones to trace the spread of Covid-19 while maintaining privacy, reports Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch. Etherington notes that, “MIT’s system sidesteps entirely many of the thorniest privacy-related issues around contact tracing.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Agam Shah spotlights the MIT Covid-19 Challenge’s Beat the Pandemic virtual hackathon, which brought together 1,500 participants working in 238 teams. During the hackathon, MIT provided participants with “access to open data sets including JHU’s epidemiological data repository and Covid-19 information compiled by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Whitney Zhang of The Tech writes about newly established MIT EMS practices in response to Covid-19. In addition to updated PPE protocols and working on smaller crews, MIT EMS is prepared to assist Cambridge’s Pro EMS and the Boston Area Ambulance Mutual Aid Network to “substantially help out with the effort,” says Suzanne Blake, MIT Emergency Management director.

CNET reporter Stephen Shankland writes that MIT researchers are “developing a smartphone app they hope will tamp down the coronavirus pandemic without trampling on privacy.” Prof. Ron Rivest explains that, "the way to flatten the curve is to get people to be sequestered who have been exposed as quickly as you can. That means identifying people as quickly as you can."

CNBC reporter Riley de Leon writes that Prof. Feng Zhang and Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann have launched a new app that allows people to report healthy symptoms and could help "researchers reveal outbreak hot spots and track the ongoing spread” of Covid-19."

Prof. Charles Stewart III speaks with New York Times reporters Stephanie Saul and Reid J. Epstein about the likelihood of fraud occurring with mail-in voting. “What we know can be boiled down to this: Voting fraud in the United States is rare, less rare is fraud using mail ballots,” says Stewart.

Wired reporter Andy Greenberg features Private Kit: Safe Paths, an app developed by MIT researchers that used GPS location data to help track the spread of Covid-19. Greenberg notes that the “next iteration of the app will build in the ability to sort all the recorded locations of any users diagnosed as Covid-19 positive into 'tiles' of a few square miles, and then cryptographically 'hash' each piece of location and time data.”

STAT reporter Casey Ross writes that MIT researchers are developing a contact tracing app that uses differential privacy to help protect the identity of users while tracking the spread of Covid-19. “The app could allow users to understand their exposure risks and help authorities identify emerging clusters and warn the public to avoid certain areas,” writes Ross.

A team of researchers from MIT, BioBot Analytics (an MIT startup), and other institutions found evidence in wastewater that were likely more people infected with Covid-19 than the reported cases in that area, reports Shraddha Chakradhar for STAT. Chakradhar notes that, “wastewater sampling could offer a community-level picture of how the disease has spread.”