Fitbit makes users to join a study related to COVID-19

Fitbit is a popular brand that makes wearable devices and is most popular for its fitness wrist bands. The wearers of Fitbit gadget users are being asked to join a study that will observe if the smartwatches are able to detect the coronavirus. Researches from the King’s College in London opine that the changes in the heart rate along with activity and their sleeping patterns can be of help to determine if the person wearing it could possibly be suffering from COVID-19.

The researchers are making use of the Mass Science which is a free app that will be tracking about thousands of users to catch the important signs and there is a hope that the alert system in the device would in future help determine if the person wearing it is infected of the virus. It is a fact that the virus could take many days to show and cause symptoms but with the increase in the evidence there are chances that the wearables could also spot some invisible signs of the infection early.

Patients of COVID-19 who are wearing smartwatches have shown very few changes in their health indicators a few days before the actual symptoms like fever, cough, loss of taste and smell begin. Scientist have hope that such devices can actually help to determine that the person suffers from coronavirus even before the actual symptoms flare up. It has been said that the majority of the transmission of the coronavirus happens in the pre-symptomatic stage or from people who have never shown any symptoms.

The researchers at the King’s College in London have come up with an app that will allow the volunteers to connect to their wearable devices and that will automatically share their data. The researchers will be assessing the data and will match the patterns which are important in people who later test positive for the coronavirus. Some of the important symptoms of the coronavirus are fever, cough, loss of taste as smell and breathlessness.

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