Coronavirus: China ropes in tech giants Alibaba and Tencent, uses drones and AI to track spread of disease
China is beefing up its 'infamous' surveillance. By roping in two of its biggest tech giants, Alibaba Group Holdings and Tencent Holdings, the country hopes to keep a close watch on those suffering from the coronavirus disease or COVID-19.
Both giants are rolling out QR codes, meant to collect information and track users. Through this tool, people are marked: whether they are potentially contagious or not. This data, in turn, is shared with the government.
In East China's Hangzhou, Alibaba has already rolled out a feature in collaboration with the government on its payment platform called Alipay. Users are asked to fill out a questionnaire, revealing their ID number, health status and travel history.
Building on this information, the app assigns each user a colored QR code --red, yellow and green -- each of them corresponding to an individual's health status.
For instance, people with more severe symptoms are assigned red, meaning they have to remain under quarantine for 14 days. Those showing less severe symptoms are assigned yellow and are asked to stay indoors for seven days. But users with a green code may travel freely, according to Reuters.
State authorities will put this tool to use at public places, including at travel checkpoints, such as train stations or highways. The tool is already in use in apartment complexes and supermarkets, where authorities are screening people before entry, reports Reuters.
After the test run in Hangzhou, Alibaba announced that it is working with the government to take the tool across China.
Tencent Holdings, which controls WeChat, is also working on a similar QR code-based tracking feature. Authorities are already using this tool to track their citizens in the southern city of Shenzhen. The company will be deploying its technology on people living in South China's Guangdong province.
In Wuhan, the city’s new party chief Wang Zhongli is spearheading a different operation: City authorities will use Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to “round up” all those infected in three days, according to Global Times.
Drones and other tech measures
Besides roping in tech companies, China has resorted to using drones, from those that help in disinfecting to loudspeaker drones asking people to put on their masks. These measures are meant to contain the virus's spread.
This is not all. A few reports suggest that the drones come attached with a QR code -- similar to Alibaba's QR codes. Around vehicle checkpoints, people have been asked to register themselves by scanning a QR code. Following this, the app will collect their health information.
The drones -- operated by the police across cities like Shenzhen in Guangdong province -- are meant to reduce the risk of infection among cops. Similarly, China has been using robots to reduce the human-to-human spread in hospitals.
Last week, China rolled out an app to alert people if they had accidental contact with a person infected with the virus. But experts fear that such measures could be counterproductive as it could stigmatize people.
Divided opinions
While this isolation could help prevent coronavirus from spreading, it’s a socially punishing way to do so, Christos Lynteris, an anthropologist and epidemic expert, told MIT Technology Review. This is down to the fact that stigma associated with diseases is rampant in the country. That means the app is likely to create a situation where people preemptively avoid others so that they are not implicated in a “loss of face chain-reaction," Lynteris said.
But others think these measures hold promise. “Health departments all across the globe are under-resourced, and particularly during crises,” Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told MIT Technology Review.
The government, she added, can take measures to preserve the anonymity of the people in the database. If the government can use a communications tool to reach those who are possibly infected, it would help them reach those who need help and take some burden off the hospitals, she explained.