Coronavirus Update: Pinterest CEO, Leading Doctors, Scientists Release A COVID-19 Self-Reporting App

Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann, a volunteer team of current and former Pinterest employees and a team of doctors, scientists and health professionals joined hands to launch the How We Feel app. This new app lets you self-report your age, gender, zip code and health symptoms you are experiencing.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, doctors and scientists need data to understand the spread and evaluate how policies and interventions are working to slow the spread of COVID-19 or any other virus. The app developers said that How We Feel app does not ask you to sign in or share your name, email address or phone number.

For this project, Silbermann teamed up with Feng Zhang, a core member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Silbermann and Zhang are friends from high school and after the pandemic grew in the country, they decided to collaborate and develop a product that can address the lack of authentic data for testing.

“When we saw how quickly COVID-19 was spreading, it felt like a critical moment to finally build that bridge between citizens and scientists that we’ve always wanted. How We Feel is an important first step,” Silbermann said in a press statement.

Meanwhile, Silbermann and his wife, Divya Silbermann, have also announced that for each download and first completed health check-in, they will donate a meal to a family in need via Feeding America. The couple had vowed to donate 10 million meals.

How We Feel app is available to download from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the U.S.

The coronavirus continues to spread across the world. The deadly virus has killed more than 6000 people in the U.S. as of April 3 and more than 245,000 people have tested positive with coronavirus. Globally, the coronavirus has killed 53,160 people and more than one million people are coronavirus positive, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center.