Google Maps Will Now Alert Its Users About COVID 19 Travel and Help You in Planning Your Journey

India like many other countries of the world is suffering from the effects of COVID-19. With the country opening up little by little in Unlock 1.0 many people are still afraid and apprehensive about going outside. Even after India introduced the lockdown in the country from March till April the cases of people affected by the coronavirus have been steadily climbing up with almost 270,000 and above confirmed cases. To ease the situation Google Maps has rolled out new features to help people navigate the outside travel with more precautions.

In the official blog of the Google, it stated that “In our latest release of Google Maps on Android and iOS, we’re introducing features to help you easily find important information if you need to venture out, whether it’s by car or public transportation."

These new features are being rolled out in selected regions around the world and India is one of those regions along with Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the US.

The new features will give users:

Alert

In the Google maps app, users will be able to get alerts if the route they are taking is affected by COVID-19. They will get notifications about the checkpoints and other restrictions on the route in the app itself. If the user is using public transport facilities then they will get alerts if any point in their route is impacted and plan accordingly along with the rules that are in place for people using public transport. There will even be notifications for users who want to go to the nearest medical facilities or COVID-19 testing centers. Google maps will give the user notification about the eligibility and the facility guidelines. With these notifications, Google is hoping to reduce the chance of people being denied medical attention and to reduce the workload on the overloaded medical system.

Crowded Areas

Users of Google Maps app know that it had a feature that used to tell how many people visit a certain place and at what time that place used to get the most people. Google is building on this feature of the Maps to give users notification about how busy a place or public transport is going to be. Google uses the data it gets from multiple users and the algorithms predict when that place will be the busiest. This feature will help users in avoiding places that have big crowds and plan their travel accordingly.

With these features from Google maps the outside travel will become a bit more manageable for people as they slowly start venturing out of their homes. Though Google has said that these features will need a lot of user participation and help from the local authorities to function properly. Not all of the features will be readily available in India but with Google alerts and predictive algorithms,

it will become a little easier to plan your trip to the market.