South African innovation: COVID-19 contact tracing application

27th March 2020

Engineering technology company racVert, on 17th March 2020 announced CORmap.org, a COVID-19 contact tracing application. CORmap is an anonymous interpersonal engagement tracking application. It offers people a simple method to keep track of who they have been in contact with over the last two weeks (COVID-19’s statistical incubation period). The application also allows people to be informed and to inform their engagement network if they are positively diagnosed with the COVID-19 virus.

“CORmap has the potential to decelerate the spread of COVID-19 by ensuring that you know whether to self isolate because someone in your engagement network was exposed to the virus,” said racVert CEO Vasheer Ramdeen.

CORmap was created to aid in containment of COVID-19 by making the contact tracing process simple for health care professionals. “If everyone knows whether they are at risk of being a COVID-19 carrier it makes the process of containment that much easier,” said Vasheer Ramdeen.

While CORmap’s primary use is to keep track of all people you come into contact with, there are secondary benefits as well:

People simply need to scan the QR code of someone that they come into contact with. The application logs this engagement for both parties and starts to build an engagement network for the individual over a two-week rolling period. The individual can also anonymously alert their engagement network that they have tested positive to the virus through the application.

“Imagine how difficult it would be to tell someone that you may have exposed them to the virus,” said Vasheer. “The application will handle that for you anonymously so that there are no excuses for that vitally important step.”

Cormap.org is online and free for anyone to use. For more information and to get started, please visit https://cormap.org