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 The service, offered free of charge, could help burnish the image of
the ride-hailing giant, which recently launched a new ad campaign
spotlighting its "No Mask, No Ride" policy in the United States.
Now being promoted to government health officials in all the
countries where it operates, the service provides health departments
with data about who used Uber's services and when and allows health
agencies to urge affected users into quarantine, the company
officials said.
Information on an individual can be accessed in a few hours, the
officials said, with the company considering COVID-19 an emergency
involving danger of death or serious physical injury. (https://ubr.to/2Wy3v4Z)
Though Uber has provided the data for months now, it has not been
put to use in many U.S. virus hotspots.
A recent Reuters review of contact tracing policies by 32 U.S. state
and local health departments found most did not use ride-hailing
data to track the virus spread. Among those neglecting the data are
Texas and Florida, states that have seen a surge in new infections.
Unlike several other countries, the United States has no federal
program or mobile application to trace the contacts of people with
coronavirus infections, a measure deemed crucial by the World Health
Organization in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not
respond to requests for comment.
Dozens of U.S. states in recent weeks began hiring thousands of
workers to interview infected patients, identify people they have
been in contact with and then order those individuals to isolate.
Ride-hailing data could play an important role in that effort,
health officials and experts said, because it identifies a larger
set of people outside the direct social circle of an infected
individual.
"This data could be potentially life-saving in cities where many
people use those services," said Mieka Smart, an epidemiology
professor at Michigan State University and a member of the COVID-19
contact tracing workgroup in Flint.
Uber has long provided data to U.S. law enforcement officials in
emergencies or criminal investigations, companies officials said. It
first began to focus on health-related issues in 2019, when a
resurgence of U.S. measles cases prompted several health departments
to request data, the officials said.
In January, company executives flew to Los Angeles to meet with the
local health department and CDC officials to discuss how Uber's data
could best be used, according to Uber's chief of global law
enforcement, Mike Sullivan.
The discussion quickly turned to the novel coronavirus, which at the
time was only beginning to spread outside of China.
"Our timing ended up being beneficial in that it allowed us to get
ahead before COVID started ramping up globally," said Sullivan, a
veteran U.S. prosecutor who leads a team of 100 Uber employees
handling data requests around the clock.
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In the first half of the year, Uber received a total of some 560
coronavirus-related requests from public health departments in 29
countries, most of which were processed by the company within two
hours, company officials said. That compares to only 10 requests
from health departments globally in 2019.
Out of the total, 158 requests were filed by health authorities in
nearly 40 locations around the United States.
Using the new portal, designed for exclusive use by public health
departments, data can be sought based on trip receipts or passenger
names. Health officials are prompted to specify what action they
want Uber to take as part of the service.
"We want to make sure that they are the experts and we follow their
recommendations" on whether to block temporarily a driver, rider or
courier from using Uber's service, Sullivan said. Uber customers
with a confirmed infection are automatically blocked from the
platform for at least 14 days.
Uber has seen an increase in contact tracing requests from countries credited
for their initial success in containing the virus, such as Australia and New
Zealand, Sullivan said. He added that contact tracing was also much more
coordinated in several European countries than in the United States, including
in the UK.
U.S. contact tracing efforts vary from region to region. In some areas, the
effort is coordinated on the state level, while cities or counties take charge
in others, requests from health departments show.
In Massachusetts, for example, local health departments gather trip details if
an infected person tells investigators they have taken a ride-hailing trip. That
information is then transferred to the state's health department, which reaches
out to Uber or Lyft to request data.
Lyft said it provided data to U.S. and Canadian health officials through its Law
Enforcement Request system, but declined to provide further details, citing
privacy reasons.
In California, local officials handle the entire contact tracing process. San
Francisco so far has requested ride-hailing data related to the coronavirus
pandemic in a handful of cases, according to Michael Reid, a physician who heads
the city's contact tracing program.
"In the end, we need all the data we can to be effective," said Reid. "Whether
it's Uber or Lyft, or the priest telling you who was in church on Sunday."
(Reporting by Tina Bellon; Editing by Tom Brown)
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