Your phone might be a powerful tool to help stop the coronavirus
[MUSIC]
Contact tracing is an effective tool to find out who a sick person may have been in contact with and unknowingly infected.
Now Apple and Google have created exposure notifications express, to build that digital contact tracing right into our phones.
The idea is to alleviate a state or country's burden of creating their own contact tracing apps.
When a user installs it on their phone, the phone uses Bluetooth to keep a record of other phones they've come into contact with.
If someone tests positive for coronavirus, the other people who are in close proximity will receive an anonymous notification of the sickness.
The hope is that way, more people can test, seek treatment or isolate themselves before symptoms show.
To access the setting on your iPhone, you must be running iOS 13.7 or newer.
Then go to Settings and scroll down until you see an icon that looks a little like a virus and says Exposure Notifications.
The setting is automatically disabled on your phone.
So you have to opt in by turning it on.
Follow the prompts and select your country, state and choose Agree.
The notifications are not available in all states if the public health authorities aren't using the service.
Or some states might suggest you download another app that is working in a similar way.
Android phones need to be running Android 6.0 to download the Exposure Notifications Express app.
For more tech news and tips, visit cnet.com.
I'm Kara Tsuboi with CNET for CBS news.
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