Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one five
Speaker 1: since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story.
Speaker 1: Your fitbit can tell you a lot about how your
Speaker 1: body is working. Now. Scientists are wondering if wearable technology
Speaker 1: like this can help detect the earliest signs of coronavirus
Speaker 1: infection and help us combat the pandemic. But first, here's
Speaker 1: what happened in virus news today. The outlook for the
Speaker 1: global economy in the wake of coronavirus just got worse.
Speaker 1: The International Monetary Fund said they now project the recession
Speaker 1: will be deeper and the recovery slower than they thought
Speaker 1: it would two months ago. Today, the i m F
Speaker 1: said it expects global gross domestic product to shrink four
Speaker 1: point nine percent this year. They had predicted three percent
Speaker 1: in April. The shock to the supply chain was larger
Speaker 1: than the i m F anticipated, and for nations struggling
Speaker 1: to control the virus spread, a longer lockdown also will
Speaker 1: take a toll on growth That accounts for the fund's
Speaker 1: more pessimistic view. In the US, spikes in sun belt
Speaker 1: states continue while the virus situation improves. In former hotspots.
Speaker 1: Now New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut will require visitors
Speaker 1: from virus hotspots to quarantine for fourteen days to avoid
Speaker 1: a resurgence in cases. The announcement is a reversal from March,
Speaker 1: when Texas and Florida ordered quarantines from the Northeast dates
Speaker 1: where cases were surging. Arizona, California, and Texas all set
Speaker 1: records for new cases on Tuesday. Finally, another disease could
Speaker 1: ravage certain populations because of the COVID nineteen pandemic. Tuberculosis
Speaker 1: could cause at least one ten thousand additional deaths in China, India,
Speaker 1: and South Africa, according to a study published by the
Speaker 1: European Respiratory Journal. Disruptions to health services and delays to
Speaker 1: diagnosis and treatment will likely increase TV fatalities. That could
Speaker 1: have a greater impact on drug resistant TB patients as
Speaker 1: they often require longer treatment. And now for today's main story,
Speaker 1: the NBA is getting play. There's the option to wear
Speaker 1: a device that tracks their health data when basketball games
Speaker 1: begin this July. This device, called an aura ring, can
Speaker 1: measure things like the body's temperature and heart rate. The
Speaker 1: hope is that it could provide the leak with early
Speaker 1: warning signs that someone may have contracted an illness like
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. Bloomberg reporter Kristen V. Brown reports that the
Speaker 1: move is part of a larger conversation about whether or
Speaker 1: not wearable technology like a fitbit or an Apple Watch
Speaker 1: can help fight the pandemic. Here's Kristen. Every day I
Speaker 1: get a text from a Stanford research group reminding me
Speaker 1: to fill out a series of questions. The questions are
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. They're mostly related to COVID nineteen. Do you
Speaker 1: have any symptoms to report today? No? Feeling good? Have
Speaker 1: you received the results from any COVID nineteen tests today? Nope?
Speaker 1: Any other stems? I guess not really kind of had it?
Speaker 1: Tell me do you think that counts. I've been participating
Speaker 1: in this study for several weeks now, and when I'm
Speaker 1: done with my questionnaire, I also send them the data
Speaker 1: my Apple Watch has captured for the day. The study
Speaker 1: is just one of several happening around the world a
Speaker 1: scientists raised to find out if wearable technology can play
Speaker 1: a role in the fight against the pandemic. They want
Speaker 1: to see if our fitbits can help predict whether users
Speaker 1: have contracted COVID nineteen days before they exhibit any discernible
Speaker 1: symptoms like a fever. A lot of the time, when
Speaker 1: people talk about predicting trends and infectious diseases like COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: they compare it to predicting the weather. Neither is a
Speaker 1: sure science. You can just make an educated guess. But
Speaker 1: to help more accurately predict the weather, we have all
Speaker 1: kinds of sensors in place all over the world. Wearables
Speaker 1: function in the same way for disease prediction. Initially, the
Speaker 1: makers of devices like the fitbit how did the ability
Speaker 1: of wearables to help users count steps, stay active, or
Speaker 1: monitor sleep. Increasingly, though they have also been used to
Speaker 1: detect illness. Past research has shown that this biometric data
Speaker 1: could support health problems, including high blood pressure, heart arrhythmia
Speaker 1: as an early stage cancer. If wearables could accurately detect
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen cases early on, it could aid efforts to
Speaker 1: help monitor new outbreaks of the virus. This could take
Speaker 1: some of the pressure off of testing and contact tracing programs.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Ratten is leading one of these studies at SCRIPTS
Speaker 1: Translational Research Insto in San Diego. California. She says they're
Speaker 1: basing these studies off of previous research that was published
Speaker 1: this January. But we found is that we had a
Speaker 1: data set of two hundred thousand Fitbit users who were
Speaker 1: their device for about two years, and we found that
Speaker 1: if you identified weeks where individuals had arresting heart rate
Speaker 1: and sleep that was greater than their individual norm or
Speaker 1: average during the study period, that the proportion of Fitbit
Speaker 1: users each week who had this abnormal data was predictive
Speaker 1: of influenza like illness, and we were able to predict
Speaker 1: influenza like illness in real time. Jennifer says that this
Speaker 1: kind of data could be really powerful when responding to
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen Scripts is monitoring the heart rate of about
Speaker 1: thirty volunteers to look for early signs of disease. So
Speaker 1: getting this data in real time has the potential to
Speaker 1: really improve outbreak response and to be able to identify
Speaker 1: when things are occurring and also be able to zoom
Speaker 1: in and identify kind of where those hot spots are.
Speaker 1: So in U s um one in five Americans where's
Speaker 1: a smart watch or fitness tracker, So there's the potential
Speaker 1: to really harness a large amount of data for many
Speaker 1: users across the country. Like a lot of other research groups,
Speaker 1: Jennifer's work focuses on the heart rate data that these
Speaker 1: devices collect. Heart rate, it turns out, can be a
Speaker 1: really good predictor of whether someone is getting sick. Jennifer
Speaker 1: says heart rate data can actually be a far better
Speaker 1: predictor of illness than more noticeable symptoms like a fever.
Speaker 1: That's especially true for COVID nineteen since so many people
Speaker 1: are asymptomatic, and often it seems there are changes to
Speaker 1: a person's heart rate long before other symptoms of an
Speaker 1: illness appear. Similar research from Stanford showed that wearables were
Speaker 1: able to detect an infection as early as nine days
Speaker 1: before someone started showing symptoms of COVID nineteen. Jennifer also
Speaker 1: says that because many people are asymptomatic, trying to use
Speaker 1: data like temperature can miss a lot of cases. So
Speaker 1: lots of people with COVID don't um have a fever,
Speaker 1: they don't develop one early on in their infection, and
Speaker 1: there's also many asymptomatic cases out there who don't develop
Speaker 1: any symptoms. So we think that just looking at temperature
Speaker 1: alone you might miss many cases out there, but we
Speaker 1: think that rusting heart rate and these other metrics collected
Speaker 1: with your wearables can potentially be an earlier warning signal
Speaker 1: that something's going on um and the Again, the great
Speaker 1: thing about the wearables is that we get each person's
Speaker 1: unique individual baseline, so that we're not comparing you to
Speaker 1: the population average. We're comparing you to yourself over time,
Speaker 1: and that allows us to kind of identify more subtle
Speaker 1: changes in your data that may indicate something's going on
Speaker 1: in your health. This data could not only predict who's
Speaker 1: getting sick, but monitor a huge number of people relatively easily.
Speaker 1: Kimnall is the director of Telehealth at stony Brook University
Speaker 1: on Long Island in New York. She has her own
Speaker 1: wearable study. She says that this information could potentially be
Speaker 1: really valuable in helping states to reopen safely. The hope
Speaker 1: is that we as a society define ways to determine
Speaker 1: risk for COVID, and you know, whoever determines that wins
Speaker 1: the grand prize of helping us reopen safely. The question
Speaker 1: where really is asking is what in the role of
Speaker 1: technology and wearable tech in in contributing to that To
Speaker 1: answering that question of who's at high risk and who's
Speaker 1: going to get sick and we don't know that yet,
Speaker 1: you know. And so there's promise that if we have
Speaker 1: something that's passed of enough that gives us early flat
Speaker 1: red flags, that we can then act upon that data.
Speaker 1: Kim had COVID nineteen herself, and that was a big
Speaker 1: part of what motivated her work. I was very committed
Speaker 1: to understanding my own risk. You know, what was my
Speaker 1: temperature going to be and will I get sick again?
Speaker 1: These are these are the premise um questions, hypotheses that
Speaker 1: we have in the study. She says. The data isn't
Speaker 1: just important for public health officials, it could also help
Speaker 1: people make better decisions in their own daily lives. Devices
Speaker 1: that can reliably predict the onset of COVID nineteen could
Speaker 1: play a major role in reopening workplaces, restaurants, and stores safely.
Speaker 1: A company could, for example, encourage returning workers to use
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch to look for signs there in early
Speaker 1: stages of the illness. The NBA is planning to do
Speaker 1: just that. As basketball games resume in July. You can
Speaker 1: say like, well, my temperature is rising and have a
Speaker 1: fever yet, But my ring tells me that I might
Speaker 1: basick of COVID, let me sell me, let me social distance.
Speaker 1: That would be the dream of what we could aspire
Speaker 1: towards if we had the ability to know for certain
Speaker 1: we could rely on that data On an individual level.
Speaker 1: Of course, that data cannot definitively tell you whether you're
Speaker 1: coming down with COVID nineteen or the flu, or maybe
Speaker 1: just experiencing an elevated heart rate because you're excited about
Speaker 1: a first date. But when taken together, all of that
Speaker 1: data suddenly becomes meaningful. That was Kristin V. Brown. You
Speaker 1: can read her story with Tom Giles Unwearables in the
Speaker 1: June two issue of Bloomberg Business Week or at Bloomberg
Speaker 1: dot com. And that's our show Today. For coverage of
Speaker 1: the outbreak from one hut and twenty bureaus around the world,
Speaker 1: visit Bloomberg dot com slash Coronavirus and if you like
Speaker 1: the show, please leave us a review and a rating
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Speaker 1: help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily
Speaker 1: edition is produced by topor Foreheads, Jordan Gas Pure Magnus
Speaker 1: Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported
Speaker 1: by Kristin V. Brown. Original music by Leo Sidrin. Our
Speaker 1: editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levy. Francesca Levy is
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.