So the question posed is, could wearable technology from the ‘health and fitness’ sector help detect Covid19?

This for me I find difficult to talk about purely because it is all that is on any news channel, any media screen or what everyone and anyone is talking about.
That said, the good news is that you could detect this horrid virus, along with other stuff like fatigue, common colds and overtraining syndrome with wearable tech.
So, how can this be possible? Let’s look at the basics.
Covid19 is predominately a respiratory illness, so anything to do with your cardiac abilities is going to suffer. Simply put, the more you move, or try to move, the more stress is placed on your heart and lungs.
When you’re carrying illness your resting HR increases because your body is using energy to make more antibodies to fight the illness whether it’s something small or major.
If you know your resting HR is X upon waking, most days of the week and it jumps to X + 10 one day for no apparent reason, it could be a sign of any of the above (virus/ illness/ fatigue/ overtraining syndrome) and you should monitor yourself closely.
When I personally experience this I manage my training, move things about and decrease the levels of physical stress I’m looking to systematically place my body under in order to get better and get the resting HR back to normal but in some cases complete rest is generally required (usually for more serious illness and overtraining syndrome).
It isn’t all about the wearable technology though. Monitoring your resting HR is as simple as pressing on your pulse either in the neck or the wrist with your index and second finger, count the number of beats over a 10 second period and multiply by 6. It’s worth knowing how your body ticks, even when this is over and done with.
At Body Planners we do encourage the use of wearable tech because it helps our clients understand how their lifestyle impacts their health, whether it is steps, calorie expenditure or HR based info, it all helps build up a clearer picture of the changes they may need to put in place to stimulate a progressive shift in their training.
Jake.