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.”
During an interview with David Brancaccio of Marketplace, Prof. Esther Duflo advocates for providing direct cash transfers to help the poor during the Covid-19 pandemic. “There is no trade off in poor countries between helping people sustain themselves financially and getting the health conditions to improve; the two have to go hand in hand,” says Duflo.
MIT researchers have developed a new website aimed at K-12 students aimed at helping them learn more about artificial intelligence, reports Mark Wilson for Fast Company. “The site provides 60 activities, lesson plans, and links to interactive AI experiments that MIT and companies like Google have developed in the past,” writes Wilson.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
A new study by MIT researchers found that 34% of respondents in the U.S. have switched to remote working during the Covid-19 pandemic, reports Jane Margolies for The New York Times. “The tools people found are working pretty well,” says Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson of the digital infrastructure for remote work.