- São Paulo leads the COVID-19 number of cases and deaths in Brazil: 2,981 and 164, respectively;
- In Loco, a Brazilian startup specialized in locations, adopted a similar measure through its Social Isolation Index.
Vivo’s parent company, Telefônica Brasil made a deal with São Paulo’s government to fight the spread of the coronavirus. The carrier will provide the state’s population location data in real time. The data will be shared with IPT – Institute for Technological Research, an organization linked to the state’s Secretariat for Economic Development.
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São Paulo leads the COVID-19 number of cases and deaths in Brazil: 2,981 and 164, respectively. Through Telefonica’s database on mobile devices, state officials will be able to track places with a high level of people gathering in order to slow the spread of the virus and point out the effectiveness of social isolation measures.
In Loco, a Brazilian startup specialized in location, is making something similar, by providing its technology to public agencies and authorities. Within cities, the measure used by the startup system is a radius of 400 meters, which results in a more precise measure of social distancing. Through its Social Isolation Index, In Loco estimates that, last Monday, 57% of the Brazilian population were at home.
Heat maps
Telefônica’s data will be transferred anonymously, in the form of a “heat map”, indicating the concentration of people in certain areas. The name of the person who owns or uses the device won’t be provided.
With this action, authorities expect to assess whether there is a large flow of people in certain neighborhoods that may cause extra burden at health facilities.
