Health researchers are studying fitness bands as ways to detect early COVID-19 symptoms in people who actively use the wearable device.
Fitness bands help in measuring the heart rate, respiratory rate, and other biometrics that may help in identifying the virus at an early stage.
"When you get ill, even before you know it, your body starts changing, your heart rate goes up," said Professor Michael Snyder of Stanford University School of Medicine.
Fitbit or Apple Watch are being examined by Stanford and several other research groups. Snyder's team brought in 5,000 people in the research to study historical smartwatch data. 31 users who tested positive for COVID-19 were studied thoroughly.
The data of all 31 infected persons pointed towards the infection before symptoms actually appeared. According to researchers, the wearable devices, in an average of three days, picks up the signals of the infection before symptoms appear.
Snyder's team also found that a smartwatch was able to detect a potential COVID-19 infection nine days before obvious symptoms appeared.
"We can tell when someone's getting ill before symptoms. That's super powerful," Snyder said. "You can tell people to stay at home. Don't go out, infect other people."
Fitbit is also conducting its own research on its devices in order to help with detecting COVID-19 before symptoms appear. 1,00,000 in the US and Canada, including 12,000 corona-positive patients were involved.
"We've seen the changes in breathing rates and heart rates that we suspected would happen," said Fitbit's lead research scientist Conor Heneghan.
With over 1.5 crore people infected, and more than 6,00,000 reported deaths across the world, the coronavirus pandemic continues to haunt the globe. Early symptoms of the virus are loss of taste and odour, dry cough and fever.
