It was installed in your phone long ago. Nearly every app you have on your phone uses a 3rd party API to find out its location.

This one is new. https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/apple-and-google-partner-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/

First, in May, both companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. These official apps will be available for users to download via their respective app stores.

Backwards compatible to Android 6.

It was installed in your phone long ago. Nearly every app you have on your phone uses a 3rd party API to find out its location.

This one is new. https://www.blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/apple-and-google-partner-covid-19-contact-tracing-technology/

First, in May, both companies will release APIs that enable interoperability between Android and iOS devices using apps from public health authorities. These official apps will be available for users to download via their respective app stores.

Backwards compatible to Android 6.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/27/cell-phone-tracking-analysis-shows-where-florida-springbreakers-and-new-yorkers

Cellphone tracking via GPS is different than what they want to do now. Here's what the new app(s) is (are) supposed to do:
1. Your device's Bluetooth is on.
2. You have the app installed that keeps a record of all the Bluetooth devices it comes into contact with.
3. This record will be stored on your phone.
4. When you get Covid-19, you download a second app with which you tell the authorities that you have it and you self-isolate yourself.
5. This app uploads the stored record of the other Bluetooth devices to a central server.
6. Your record will be looked at and everyone within the last N days whose Bluetooth device was recorded by your device will get a warning in their first app that they were in the neighborhood of a condem... no, convic... no, infected person and that they should self-isolate.

Trouble is, Bluetooth is 360 degrees bubble, not just 360 on the plain like our government is thinking. So if you live in an apartment building and someone two stories up develops a Covid-19 infection, his Bluetooth has been registered by your device even if you have never seen the person. But you should now self-quarantine anyway, as the devices don't lie man. That Covid-19 can't pass through walls is something we don't care about. Bluetooth also doesn't do directional recording as far as I know, so it won't know if the device was next to it, or above or below it. Nothing said about driving on the motorway...

Contact tracing by Apple and Google: is privacy dead?
https://www.abine.com/blog/2020/contact-tracing-by-apple-and-google-is-privacy-dead/
What are the contact tracing privacy promises from Apple and Google?

... Apple and Google claim “user privacy and security are central to the design.” Users will self-report and authorize requests for their data.

I have a Fairphone which has a pretty poor battery life. Really don't want to keep bluetooth on the whole time. Never mind the privacy implications.
.

The first article in Linus Tech Tips TechLinked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esNwy47BMFA explains more of this, with pictures. MIT is also involved.

The Australian government has been saving for a while now that it's not going to go down the path of tracking people via their phones.
Then last night, this: Coronavirus lockdowns could end in months if Australians are willing to have their movements monitored

This morning there's a more interesting take on something similar: Coronavirus prompts scientists to make phone app to track symptoms and predict COVID-19 outbreaks

Some of Australia's leading astrophysicists have teamed up with public health experts to detect possible outbreaks of COVID-19, even before testing takes place.
...
Swinburne University astrophysics professor Matthew Bailes, who leads Australia's research into gravitational waves, has put that research on hold to devote his time — and supercomputers — to the project.

"We're used to catching literally hundreds of gigabytes a second of data from the Square Kilometre Array [radio telescope project]," Professor Bailes said.

"And the amount of data we're talking about for this is a small fraction of that."

Then last night, this: Coronavirus lockdowns could end in months if Australians are willing to have their movements monitored

And it also helps against forest arsonists.

---

So, by the look of things, the Coronavirus is going to push the world into Georg Orwell's 1984.
How long before it will be a crime, not to have a smartphone, and also have all possible location services set to ON?

Geeze.....

An intriguing animation at https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1539110/?utm_source=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/1539110 that shows the spreading of the coronavirus day to day via different countries (and a cruise ship). Numbers by John Hopkins University, animation by BBC.

Go Ameri... oh.

Yep, Trump wants America first in everything:-)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52304993
Coronavirus: Trump says peak is passed and US to reopen soon

It's been nice knowing you all. 😬

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52304993
Coronavirus: Trump says peak is passed and US to reopen soon

It's been nice knowing you all. 😬

Well, Trump could be the only U.S President that has been impeached twice, if the decision to open the U.S this early leads to utter disaster.

Yeah glad I visited you (both) last year, because that's now an impossibility. I would kill you. All because of an escaped biological weapon out of China.

You've caught it?

Who knows? We're not being tested.
But no, I only have my allergies. Still, by the time we're free to go places again, we need a new smartphone with all the corona-movement-apps of all the countries we go through/to. Plus papers. Plus an embedded chip. Plus.. well.

If you ain't got a dry cough, you're fine. If you hardly meet anyone, you're probably fine.

Only cough I have is my asthma. With slime. I meet people daily, 5 feet away from me. One does have to go to the store. Although the other day I was in the hospital for unrelated things and someone there was coughing. So yes, maybe...

It is kind of amusing the panic going on for no reason. I'd have let anyone who was elderly or had health problems isolate themselves at home and let the rest of us go on as normal. Not many healthy folk die of it.

I know it's mostly the elderly, but young healthy people die of it as well. You'd want the mild version if you get it, not the deep version as the latter is the deadly one. You'll drown in your own lung fluids.

What I don't understand is there are apparently three or four vaccines which work, they killed corona in mice. Just use them. Now.

There are 70 possible vaccines available or being tested, but they're not around in bulk volumes. And working in mice doesn't mean they work in people. By the time they've tested a vaccine and found one working, it still has to be mass produced. And for that special plants have to be built. At least Bill Gates is setting up 7 different factories already, one for each possible vaccine they're testing in the US. It'll cost him billions because when a working vaccine is found, it can only be produced in one of the 7 factories. The others are duds. He knows that and doesn't care.

Are you actually forcibly confined?

No, it's advisory here as well. Stay at home when you feel ill, have a fever, have a cough, or are actively sneezing. Cough and sneeze in the inside of your elbow. Wash your hands every 3 minutes for at least 20 seconds. But don't use too much water, because we're running out of fresh water (really....). Most stores are still open, but no one goes there. Everywhere the 5 feet rule. Social distancing.

One does not, one can get home deliveries as I do. And always have done. Shops are so last century. Takes up way too much of my time.

I can do online shopping as well, but the thing is, the minimum required amount before they bring it is €50,- each time. I don't spend that much money on chicken.
Besides, I am moving next month and will then live 70 meters away from the biggest Jumbo supermarket around. You really expect me to do my shopping online then? I'm also 50 meters away from the mall. Most stores there are open and don't have online stores.

With a large sum of money from the government, surely large volumes are easily made?

No, it's not that easy and it's not about money. They have to grow culltures which takes time. They'll have specialized machines for that and those aren't come by. Why do you think Bill is building 7 factories, each with a different machine, knowing fully well that the other 6 factories and their machines will be useless?