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Apple today put in place more COVID-19-related safeguards — this time centered on its App Store. In a note posted to its developer community, the company explains that it will take steps to vet submissions of apps focused on the global pandemic that has begun to impact nearly every aspect of life across the globe.

“To help fulfill these expectations, we’re evaluating apps critically to ensure data sources are reputable and that developers presenting these apps are from recognized entities such as government organizations, health-focused NGOs, companies deeply credentialed in health issues, and medical or educational institutions,” the company explains. “Only developers from one of these recognized entities should submit an app related to COVID-19.”

In addition to assessing content and restricting the number of developers who can submit, the company is also barring the release of entertainment apps and games looking to capitalizing on the ubiquitous and life-threatening subject matter.

Apple has also asked developers to tick the “Time-Sensitive Event” option, in order to help expedite the submission, given that some may be aimed at helping users in time of crisis. The company will also be waiving some annual membership fees for non-profit orgs and government agencies looking to develop apps related to the outbreak.

A cursory search of “COVID” and “coronavirus” finds a number of apps using the terms, ranging from case trackers, news applications, a reminder to wash hands and some gaming titles.

Source: Tech Crunch

Given its name, you might expect “Devs” — which launched earlier this month on the new FX on Hulu — to be a “Silicon Valley”-style sitcom about the tech industry. And there are indeed some delightful moments where “Ex Machina” writer-director Alex Garland pokes fun at San Francisco and tech culture.

But the prevailing mood is one of mystery and dread. The show takes place largely at a fictional quantum computing company called Amaya, run by its brooding CEO Forest (played by Nick Offerman), which employs Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) and her boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) . Amaya is also home to a division known as Devs — a group that’s mysterious enough that most employees don’t even know what the team is working on.

On the latest installment of the Original Content podcast, TechCrunch Events Director Emma Comeau joins us to discuss the three episodes that have aired thus far.

While it’s too early to evaluate how the show will answer its big questions, we’re all fans, thanks to its eerie visuals, impressive performances (particularly from Offerman and Mizuno) and the tantalizing way that it lays out its mysteries — during the spoiler discussion, we spent most of our time puzzling over clues about the ultimate goal of the Devs team.

And although the show is certainly tense, it’s actually something of a relief to spend a few hours worrying about sinister tech companies, rather everything else happening in the world outside.

You can listen in the player below, subscribe using Apple Podcasts or find us in your podcast player of choice. If you like the show, please let us know by leaving a review on Apple. You can also send us feedback directly. (Or suggest shows and movies for us to review!)

If you want to skip ahead, here’s how the episode breaks down:

0:00 Intro
3:26 “Devs” review (mild spoilers)
26:20 “Devs” spoiler review/speculation

Source: Tech Crunch

After President Trump announced that the government was working with Google to build a coronavirus screening site that was at the core of the administration testing process, Google quickly corrected this and said that it was actually Verily, Alphabet’s health division, that was working on this and that the site wasn’t ready for a nationwide rollout yet.

Today, Vice President Pence provided a bit more detail, tough he didn’t removes all of the confusion around this. A pilot of this screening site will launch for the Bay Area on Monday, March 16, he said, and direct people to local drive-through testing sites if necessary.

He reiterated that the government is working with Google on this (though my guess is that the VP, just like most people, isn’t all that clear on the complicated company structure that is Alphabet) .

“I know Google issued a statement that they are planning to launch a website,” Pence said. “I think they gave a date of Monday, March 16th and we’re working literally around the clock and I know that our whole team is working on the public and private partnership. Couldn’t be more grateful to all at the hard-working people at Google who are helping to put this website together.” He added that the White House will have more to share about this tomorrow, Sunday, at 5pm ET.

Debbie Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, noted that this is not just a simple “checkbox website” but that it actually goes through “critical symptoms and that’s why we’re giving ourselves the weekend to get it put up.”

Separately, the White House also told us that the administration is indeed working with Google to develop this site and most of this lines up with the statement we received from Verily yesterday. Hopefully, we’ll know more details after tomorrow’s briefing.

Our earlier coverage:

Source: Tech Crunch

In an announcement from the White House Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump said that he has announced an emergency declaration to free up more federal resources that states can access as they respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

“I am officially declaring a national emergency. Two very big words,” said Trump.

The order also breaks some of the logjam that had stymied the ability of local and state health care organizations to conduct testing for the novel coronavirus.

Typically the powers authorized in the Act are used to offer assistance during terrorist attacks and natural disasters. During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, then-President Obama signed a national emergency declaration that allowed healthcare systems to implement disaster plans in case they became overwhelmed.

That declaration allowed the Department of Health and Human Services to waive certain regulatory requirements for healthcare facilities in response to the pandemic. Specifically, healthcare was able to submit waivers to establish alternate care sites and modify patient triage protocols, patient transfer procedures and other actions when they implement disaster plans, according to a government statement at the time.

The Trump administration had come under fire for not allowing states like California to access Medicaid in an effort to expand coverage. However, the authorization opens up state access to Medicaid more quickly than had happened under the Obama administration during its response to the swine flu outbreak. President Obama waited until October to issue an Emergency

On Thursday, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Nurses Association jointly sent a letter to Vice President Mike Pence, who heads the Coronavirus Task Force, urging the administration to issue an emergency declaration.

Now the President has responded with just such an initiative. In his Rose Garden address the President also said he was “urging every state to set up emergency operation centers effective immediately.”

The President also praised the work being done by corporations like Roche, which has developed a new diagnostic tool to market that can more quickly identify infections, and Google, which is bringing a new pre-screening website online that anyone can access to check their symptoms and be directed to testing locations around the country.

The emergency declaration also included waivers on interest payments for student loans and a bulk purchase of oil to stock the oil reserve and bail out oil companies hit by the ongoing price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“We had some very old and obsolete rules,” the President said of the regulations that have been circumvented byt the excecutive order.

These rules will allow testing to ramp up across the country in state labs and private facilities.

By using the Stafford Act, the President allows the Small Business Administration to make disaster loans available to eligible businesses and households. It also will allow states to tap Medicaid to finance and expand their capabilities to respond to the spreading COVID-19 epidemic.

At the same time the White House moved forward with an emergency declaration, it had stalled negotiations on the approval of a broad aid package negotiated between Democratic and Republican leadership.

Democrats in the House of Representatives led by Nancy Pelosi negotiated with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House reps until 4 a.m. on Friday to come up with an agreement. Voting on the deal has been delayed as Republican leadership waits for approval from the White House, according to a report in Reuters.

The House bill would provide free coronavirus testing and two weeks of paid sick leave for workers affected by the virus.

While the bill doesn’t need the support of Republicans in the House, given the Democratic majority, without the support of Senate Republicans, who are in the majority in that chamber, the bill would fail.

Additional economic aid is at the heart of the debate with Democrats hoping to expand coverage for workers who may not have access to corporate-funded safety nets and Republicans looking to provide tax cuts and financial support to businesses. The President has called for a $1 trillion payroll tax cut, which isn’t supported by congressional membership in either party, according to Reuters.

Stimulus is going to be a necessity if the U.S. is to withstand the economic blows a prolonged outbreak and botched response could bring and calm nervous investors.

“The financial markets and the coronavirus gave us advance warning. We really got a month’s notice on what was coming at us, and we just ignored it,” Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist now at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told Barrons. “They’re looking ahead and they’re scared. I’m scared.”

Source: Tech Crunch

During a press conference at the White House, President Trump today announced that the government is working with Google to build an online screening website for COVID-19.

The announcement was short on details, but the idea, it seems, is to give users the ability to enter their symptoms and see if they need additional testing. None of this sounds extremely complicated, but according to Trump, Google has 1,700 engineers working on this.

According to Debbie Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, users will have to log into this new screening website, fill out a screening questionnaire and risk factor questionnaire and then directed to a “drive through” testing facility.

In some ways, the announcement raises more questions than it answers, though. It’s unclear what data Google will collect and whether logging in will be mandatory, for example.

The partnership with Google is part of a larger private sector partnership the White House has set up that also includes Walmart, CVS, Walgreens and others.

We have asked Google for more details and will update this post once we hear more.

Updating…

Source: Tech Crunch

Industries across the spectrum are struggling to meet the challenges that the current Coronavirus outbreak presents. Few, though, are as immediately impacted as the airlines (and all the third-party companies that provide services to them), which have seen an immediate and drastic reduction in demand.

As Delta CEO Ed Bastian noted in a letter to the company’s staff today, the company is now seeing more cancellations than new bookings over the next month. And as a result of this, Delta now expects a capacity reduction of 40 percent in the next few months, “the largest capacity reduction in Delta’s history, including 2001.” Only a few days ago, Delta was looking at a 15 percent capacity cut.

Unlike some of its competitors, including United and American, Delta says it is also eliminating all of its flights to continental Europe for the next 30 days (and that could still be extended). For Delta, this means parking 300 aircraft. The company has also announced a hiring freeze and is now offering voluntary unpaid leaves, too.

“We’ll be making more critical decisions on our response in days to come,” Bastian writes. “The situation is fluid and likely to be getting worse. But what hasn’t changed is this: Delta remains better-positioned to weather a storm of this magnitude than ever before in our history. We’ve spent a decade building a strong, resilient airline powered by the best professionals in the business. We will get through this, and taking strong, decisive action now will ensure that we are properly positioned to recover our business when customers start to travel again.”

Delta isn’t alone in this move. American Airlines is reducing its international capacity by 34 percent. Lufthansa already said it’s planning to reduce capacity by 50 percent and potentially grounding all of its A380s or even temporarily halting all operations. Discounter Norwegian has furloughed half of its staff and grounded 40 percent of its long-haul fleet.

The way things are going, the airline industry will look quite different once this crisis ends. For Delta especially, this is a far cry from keynoting CES and introducing a bunch of new technology solutions. Only a few months ago, after all, the airline industry was still in the middle of a boom. Now, the focus isn’t on shiny new tech but simply making it through the next few months.

Source: Tech Crunch

Instagram is embracing its potential as a news source, employing its ubiquity to distribute Coronavirus prevention techniques through a new call-out at the top of its homescreen feed. In some countries, Instagram will show a link to information from the World Health Organization and local health ministries along with a message like this: “Help Prevent the Spread of Coronavirus: See the latest information from the World Health Organization so you can help prevent the spread of COVID-19. — Go to who.int”

An Instagram spokesperson tells TechCrunch that the notice will start appearing in countries that have seen significant impact from the virus.

Additionally, Instagram is preventing users from searching for COVID-19-related augmented reality effects unless they were made in partnership with legitimate health organizations. This could limit the spread of disinformation or insensitive jokes about the virus. Instagram was already sending false information to fact checkers and listing official health sources atop the search results for coronavirus-related queries.

Meanwhile, on Snapchat, the company prohibits partners from sharing misinformation, relying on its closed platform to prevent the false news hoaxes that have plagued open platforms like Facebook. Snapchat is also highlighting health information shared by its Discover partners including NBC’s Stay Tuned, Sky News, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, and NowThis. Those include

• • Washington Post explained the proper way to wash your hands 

  • WSJ looked at how COVID-19 spread across the world 

  • SkyNews Explains (UK) breaks down how to self-isolate 

These are smart efforts by social platforms that know they might get opened by more people more often than some traditional news sources. With over 1 billion monthly users on Instagram and over 200 million daily users on Snapchat, they have the power to spread vital information and act as a new form of the emergency broadcast system.

Source: Tech Crunch

An Apple Store employee who was on leave from the Third St. Promenade store in Santa Monica, California tested positive for COVID-19 late yesterday. The employee had been on leave to care for a relative since March 2nd.

Apple consulted health experts and deep cleaned the Third St. store which remains open. Apple says that it has also instituted additional deep cleaning protocols and taken measures to reduce density by cancelling Today at Apple sessions and spacing out Genius Bar appointments.

As of March 4, Los Angeles County had declared a local emergency and on March 11th CA Governor Gavin Newsom recommended against large scale events. The city of Santa Monica cancelled all public gatherings as of March 12. Apple’s home county of Santa Clara had announced 66 total confirmed cases of coronavirus as of yesterday and issued an order to cancel mass gatherings over 1,000 people for three weeks. Yesterday’s biggest closure news, though, came from Disney, which announced that Walt Disney World, Disneyland in California and Disneyland Paris would all close for several weeks.

We received a full statement from Apple regarding the employee as follows:

“Apple’s first priority — now and always — is the health and safety of our employees, customers and the communities we serve. An employee at our Third St. Promenade store in Santa Monica informed us they had tested positive for COVID-19 late yesterday. The employee has not been to the store since taking leave on March 2 to care for a relative.

In consultation with health experts, we’ve taken a number of steps to protect our teams and customers. All our stores around the world have increased deep cleaning protocols and we have actively reduced customer density in all stores worldwide by cancelling Today at Apple sessions and creating extra space for Genius Bar appointments. As a precaution, we also undertook an additional extensive deep clean overnight before reopening the Third St. Promenade store.

We recognize this is a challenging and ever changing time for our global community and our thoughts are with those around the world personally affected by COVID-19 and the heroic medical professionals and researchers fighting it.”

Many Apple Stores around the world remain open, while others have been closed in alignment with local regulations amid coronavirus concerns. The additional cleaning protocols have been in use since February at Apple Stores worldwide. In addition, Apple has closed its stores in Italy, which remains on lockdown. The last of Apple’s 42 stores in mainland China re-opened today with limited hours after closures.

Apple has extended additional sick time to all employees and any employee with symptoms similar to COVID-19 will be paid for sick time as long as they are out. I also understand that Apple Store managers are being as flexible as possible with concerned employees who are not yet sick though no official policies have been issued.

I asked Apple for comment on whether it was considering closing any retail stores in the US but it would not comment at this time. One would absolutely have to imagine that it was monitoring all of this very closely though. And given that it has proven willing to close every store in China and Italy due to conditions, it would probably do the same in the US.

Source: Tech Crunch