Apple Watch, Fitbit May Help Spot Emerging Coronavirus Outbreaks

Petri Hollmen was feeling fine the morning of March 12 when he got a troubling reading from the smart ring he wears to track sleep. His “readiness,” a well-being indicator measured by the device, was registering far below normal. The Finnish entrepreneur wasn’t feeling any of the symptoms associated with the novel coronavirus, but because he’d recently returned to his home in Turku, Finland, from a ski trip to Austria, he got a Covid-19 test anyway. “I felt a bit shamed to do that, since I felt perfectly fine,” he wrote in a Facebook post. The results showed that Hollmen had, in fact, been infected.

Initially, the makers of devices such as the Apple Watch, the Fitbit fitness tracker, and the Oura ring Hollmen wears played up their ability to help users count steps, stay active, or monitor sleep. It turns out these gadgets may also be useful in detecting illness. Scientists around the world are racing to discover if wearable technology can tell whether users have contracted coronavirus days before they have a dry cough or any other telltale indicators. In cases of Covid-19, changes to heart rate, for example, often appear before more noticeable symptoms, such as fever. Wearable devices could act as critical early warning systems, predicting and helping prepare for the next wave of a disease that has infected more than 8 million people globally.