Uber Launches COVID-19 Contact Tracking Service

(Reuters) — Uber has quietly launched a service that allows public health authorities to quickly access data on drivers and riders who are presumed to have contacted someone infected with COVID-19, company officials said. I told him.

The service, which is offered free of charge, helps to sharpen the image of the ride-hailing giant, who recently launched a new advertising campaign in the US that emphasizes the “no mask, no riding” policy.

The service has been promoted to government health authorities in all countries in which it does business, providing data to the health department about who used Uber’s services to help affected users when, how and how Shows how you can drive quarantine.

Information about individuals can be accessed within hours, officials said, and the company considers COVID-19 an emergency with the risk of death or serious injury.

Uber has been providing data for months, but it’s not used by many virus hotspots in the United States.

Recent reviews by Reuters Contact trace Policies from 32 health departments in the US state and province found that most people did not use ride data to track the spread of the virus. Ignoring the data is Texas and Florida, where the number of new infections is skyrocketing.

Unlike Some other countries, There are no federal programs or mobile applications to track contact with people with coronavirus infections in the United States. This is a measure considered important by the World Health Organization in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not respond to requests for comment.

In the last few weeks dozens of US states have begun to hire thousands of workers, interview infected patients, identify contacts and order them for quarantine. Healthcare professionals and professionals have identified more people outside the infected person’s immediate social circle, suggesting that ride hailing data could play a significant role in that effort. Stated.

“This data could save lives in cities where many people use these services,” Mieka, a professor of epidemiology at Michigan State University and a member of Flint’s COVID-19 contact tracking workgroup. Smart said.

Uber has long provided data to US law enforcement agencies in emergencies and criminal investigations. Authorities first began to focus on health-related issues in 2019, and the recurrent US measles incident has led to multiple health departments requesting data.

According to Mike Sullivan, head of Uber’s global law enforcement agency, he flew to Los Angeles in January to meet with local health department and CDC representatives to see how Uber’s data could be leveraged. We talked.

The debate quickly turned into a novel coronavirus, which was just beginning to spread outside of China at that time.

“Our timing was beneficial in that we were able to stay ahead of COVID’s global launch,” heading a team of 100 Uber employees to handle data requests around the clock. The veteran US prosecutor said.

Uber received a total of 560 coronavirus-related requests from public health departments in 29 countries in the first half of the year, most of which was processed by the company within two hours, a company official said. This is equivalent to 10 requests from the global health sector in 2019.

Of the total, 158 requests were submitted by approximately 40 health authorities in the United States.

Search data based on travel receipts or passenger names using a new portal designed specifically for the public health sector. Health officials are asked to specify the actions they want Uber to take as part of the service.

Sullivan said, “Whether they want to make sure they’re experts and follow their recommendations,” regarding whether drivers, riders, or couriers can temporarily disable Uber’s services. “. Uber customers with confirmed infections will be automatically blocked from the platform for at least 14 days.

According to Sullivan, Uber is witnessing an increasing number of contact tracking requests from countries that have been the first to be successful in containing the virus, such as Australia and New Zealand. He added that contact tracking is much more coordinated in some European countries than in the United States, including the United Kingdom.

Contact tracking efforts in the United States vary by region. In some areas, efforts are coordinated at the state level, but cities or counties are responsible for other areas, with requests from the Ministry of Health.

In Massachusetts, for example, the local Department of Health collects travel details when an infected person tells an investigator that he has taken a ride tour. The information will then be forwarded to the state health department and contact Uber or Lyft to request the data.

Lyft said it provided data to health authorities in the United States and Canada through a law enforcement request system, but declined to provide further details for privacy reasons.

In California, local authorities handle the entire contact tracking process. San Francisco has so far requested, in a few cases, vehicle dispatch data related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Michael Reid, a doctor who leads the San Francisco contact tracking program.

“In the end, we need all the data we can do to be effective,” Reid said. “Whether it’s Uber or Lyft, or the priest tells who was in church on Sunday”

(Report by Tina Belon. Tom Brown edit)