Apple and Google team up to track patients with COVID-19

Google is adding features to Maps to alert users to travel restrictions related to Covid-19, to help them better plan their routes, the Alphabet group's division announced on Monday.

The update will allow users to check how crowded a station might be at a given time, or if buses on a particular route have a limited schedule, Google said.

 Alerts will be available in Argentina, France, India, the Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom, among other countries.

 The new features will include details on checkpoints for Covid-19 and restrictions at national borders, starting with Canada, Mexico and the United States.

 In recent months, the company has analyzed location data from the phones of billions of users in 131 countries to examine mobility during restrictions and to help health authorities assess whether people are complying with social restraints and other orders.  to control the spread of the virus.

 Google has invested billions of dollars in search engine advertising revenue to digitally map the world, attracting an average of 1 billion users a month to the free navigation app.

Countries are intensely preparing to welcome their tourists.  This is also the case of the French who have already arranged the first beach during the pandemic, with separate areas to respect the distance.  People are sunbathing in pens on Couchant Beach.

The new beach makes the holidays completely different than you knew them.  As soon as people enter the airport, they go through filters to prove that they are healthy, wear a mask, including on the plane, and on landing undergo other checks.  No one assumes that a person infected with coronavirus will enter their country.  And once you arrive at the hotel it is possible to find out that only one in two rooms is occupied or that the neighboring hotel is closed.  

There is no need for congestion in the resort, at bars and especially on the beach, where equally drastic measures are taken.

 If in Italy, on the beach, we could sit on sunbeds between plexiglass panels, in France, on Couchant beach, some kind of pens were arranged.  Tourists sit in the sun on the sand, surrounded by four pairs tied with string between them.  That is practically the perimeter in which they are allowed to move.

Couchant Beach is located in La Grande-Motte, a town in the south of France.  It is known for its fine sand and wide beaches, with many yachts anchored ashore.  One night accommodation at a 3-star hotel costs on average 490 lei, and at a 5-star hotel, 807 lei.

  "People are likely to travel less abroad, and holidays at home may become commonplace.  Travel must be based on mutual respect, solidarity and responsibility, ”says Andy Rutherford, founder of the UK-based travel company Fresh Eyes.

Over the past few months, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to stay out of the African continent. Coronavirus came around in the world's largest concentration of people with HIV. However this is no longer the case as people are now starting to prepare for the worst.

The first cases of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa were confirmed just three weeks ago but the rate of infection in countries like South Africa is climbing easily.

With more than 200 people infected, the  government has announced that schools are shutting down and large gatherings are banned. 

The police is arresting citizens who test positive to the coronavirus and refuse to go into quarantine.

However, the authorities can't stop the coronavirus spreading and just about everyone in this country understands it, including South Africa's health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize.

"In any community, 60% to 70% of the population will be affected by the virus. We can't hide that... most of us will have this virus," he told a group of doctors in the capital Pretoria.

He asked the nation to be careful and understand the harmful effects of coronavirus, while South Africa has "unique dynamics" he said, with the world's largest concentration of people with HIV, plus a significant number with tuberculosis.

Researchers suggest in a study conducted by the University of Maryland in Baltimore that the SARS-CoV-2 virus follows a seasonal schedule and prefers a cool, dry climate, Agerpres reports.

The researchers looked at the association between climate type and the spread of COVID-19 infection, examining climate data in cities around the world affected or not by coronavirus between January 1 and March 10 this year.

 Comparing eight cities with a strong spread of the epidemic (Wuhan, Tokyo, Daegu, Qom, Milan, Paris, Seattle and Madrid) with 42 other cities that were not affected or did not register with the new coronavirus, it was found that the cities  most affected by the pandemic are in a latitude corridor between 30 and 50 degrees north (N), and their climate patterns are similar: they have an average temperature between 5 and 11 degrees Celsius and a specific low humidity (between 44 and  84%), when the virus spreads faster.

 Thus, the study shows that the distribution of substantial outbreaks of COVID-19 caused by values ​​such as latitude, temperature and humidity are consistent with the behavior of the seasonal respiratory virus and that SARS-CoV-2 is more difficult to spread under conditions of higher temperature and humidity.

 An analysis of the distribution of coronavirus outbreaks could help prevent areas at high risk of transmission in the future, although the study's authors warn that new research on climate models is needed.