Apple works with White House to release COVID-19 app

Yahoo Finance’s Dan Howley joins the On The Move panel to break down the details of Apple’s new COVID-19 app. The tech giant partnered with the CDC and White House to create the app.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: You're watching Yahoo Finance Live, I'm Julie Hyman. Just taking a look at the markets here. We've got the Dow down 3.2%, the S&P up about 3%, the NASDAQ off by 3.1% today.

Looking at some of the most actively traded stocks on Yahoo Finance, we've got Ford, which is trading off by about 3%. Bank of America, down 4%. General Electric shares down 7%. And Carnival Corporation, the cruise line operator, continues a sharp slide or should I say resumed, since we saw a market rebound over the past several days. Carnival is down by about 18.5%.

So still a lot of selling after a few days of gains going on. Apple shares, meantime, are down about 3%. And we had some news from Apple today that the company is rolling out a new web site and app to help people sort of pre-screen for coronavirus, if I'm understanding it correctly.

Dan Howley, you already downloaded the app and gave it a test run. So what exactly is this thing designed to do?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, it's not a test for, like, a real clinical test. So don't you know go and download it and think this will make sure that I don't have coronavirus. But it does offer you a screening where you can put in the different symptoms that you may have, or you're experiencing, or you think you may be experiencing.

And it will walk you through different steps kind of putting things into-- you know, your age, your different vulnerabilities. So if you have diabetes, congestive heart failure, things along those lines, cirrhosis of the liver. And then it'll say, look, this is where you probably are as far as the spectrum of chances of being infected.

So I, for instance, just used it. I live, obviously, in New York where we have a huge amount of cases. So one of the questions is, have you been around people with it? Do you live in an area with a heavy rate of infection?

And then it basically says, OK, what you need to do is shelter in place or stay at home, do social distancing, and things along those lines. And then it'll also tell you whether or not you should go to the hospital. So it says, for me in particular, don't go to the hospital because there's just no reason to.

But I assume in the beginning when you start off, it gives you a list of items that would be serious symptoms, fainting, a super high temperature, dizziness, extreme pressure in your chest. In that instance it tells you to call 911 right away.

So it really is pretty helpful, explaining how all of this works. And basically says at the end, look, if you have mild or moderate symptoms just avoid the hospitals. And obviously, that's something that lawmakers, and regulators, and health officials have been saying so far as well.

- Dan, I'm curious. Could this information as it starts to get aggregated help health officials get ahead of potential acceleration of the outbreak? I mean, it's the kind of data you don't want to mute.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, exactly. And Apple specifically says in there that it's not going to share your data if you don't want them to with any anybody. It did work with the CDC on this. You would think that they would have some form of mechanism to kind of help collect that data if you want to.

I didn't see a means to do so during my brief walkthrough. But there may be something along those lines in there. But privacy obviously a big issue here because it's a medical issue.

And then on top of that, Apple has privacy is one of its number one targets as far as its big sales features. So you've got to kind of be careful when you're walking that line. But it would be very helpful, you're right.

JULIE HYMAN: Dan, Apple may be trying to keep itself busy because it might not have a new product for a little while, right? You've been reporting out on a possible delay to the next iPhone. What's the latest on that?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, we've heard up and down about how the next iPhone, this 5G iPhone that's supposed to come in September could be delayed. And I was speaking with Wedbush analyst Dan Ives yesterday. And he said he would give it a 10% to 15% chance of them actually announcing that phone in September.

And he had a good point saying, look, Apple is a company that doesn't necessarily just put the timeline first. And it's taking into account different cultural events that go on. And it's done that frequently. You've seen Tim Cook come out and say how he's working to make sure that face masks are going to health care workers.

And he said, look, if there are still military hospitals set up in parking lots in this country, Apple's not going to release a new phone. The optics to that would just be horrible for the company, especially one that relies on optics so heavily as Apple.

So he said it's a 10% to 15% chance we would have it at the normal time if things, the status quo I guess as it were right now, is still the same. If it does end up improving and we see these hospital tents taken down, the infection rates decreased dramatically, then obviously that would fall into that 10% to 15% chance of them launching on time. But I wouldn't expect it.

The issue with them potentially launching later is that you would crunch that timeline for people to purchase their devices. Again, you have a cycle each year where you'd see people swarm in and purchase the new iPhones. As you get towards the end of Q3, that's around the summer, and into Q4, that's when they launch the new phone.

So the timeline for people to purchase that iPhone 12 would be shrunk because it would be coming out in the late Q4, early Q1 frame. So for them, it's important to get as much as they can out of sales for this device. But with three million people just applying for first time assistance for a job loss has been-- I mean, you've got to wonder, there's going to be a crunch even more on that now.

JULIE HYMAN: Yes, indeed, although of all the companies to worry about, Apple with its big cash piles probably not tops of the list for doing something like this. Dan Howley, thank you so much. Thank all of you at Yahoo Finance.