Fitbit Features Could Help Detect Coronavirus Symptoms
With the world coming to a stand still because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a noticeable decline in activity amongst the fitness tracker user data. The pandemic has been affecting our daily activity and steps which could mean lower fitness levels and immunity.
American company Fitbit, whose smartwatches and fitness trackers are quite the fad, claims that its apps will now be able to detect and tell if you have Covid-19 symptoms. This new Fitbit feature has already been made live, and you can find the Covid-19 tab at the bottom of the app which will give you live updates on coronavirus from the World Health Organisation.
A device called a pulse oximeter is used to test for the dangerously low oxygen levels that come with pneumonia caused by Covid-19.
— OneZero (@ozm) May 13, 2020
If you wear a Fitbit, you basically have a full-featured pulse oximeter sitting on your wrist already. https://t.co/XcGrFEjWiQ
With tech assisting people across the world to fight the deadly coronavirus, Fitbit and its features can adequately help you identify Covid-19 symptoms.
The Fitbit blood oxygen level measuring feature along with its sleep monitoring and pulse calibrating feature can help you detect if you are having any of the symptoms. Fitbit's pulse oximeter can help with telling oxygen saturation levels in your blood steam.
Even though Fitbit does not have an FDA approval yet, it may be used to detect symptoms on time and help decide on when it's time to call the doctor. Fitbit bands are not intended for medical purposes, but many of the statistics it gives could be helpful indicators for Covid-19 patients.
The oxygen level tracking is a latest feature and is available only on Fitbit Charge 3, Fitbit Charge 4, Fitbit Ionic and Fitbit Versa.
Fitbit has donated about 1,000 fitness bands to front line risk workers like – pharmacy store workers, healthcare providers, grocery workers and others.
We're working with Stanford and Scripps to help develop algorithms to detect COVID-19 https://t.co/ZkZhmQslKb
— James Park (@parkjames) April 15, 2020