The coronavirus pandemic induced lockdowns and travel restrictions in a number of countries which were affected the most as a preventive measure. It has been a few months since the travel restrictions have been in place, but now some of the countries have now started to ease the restrictions to keep the economy rolling. Since the scare of coronavirus continues to remain in place, Google Maps has on June 8, 2020 rolled out many new features for iOS and Android.
The new features have been rolled out to keep the travelers and commuters informed about the impact of coronavirus to their trip. This will include information like the travel restrictions in different countries or how crowded the public transportation would be. The transit alerts will be provided by the local agencies and will now show on Maps and will keep the people informed about the government mandates that are related to the public transportation.
Not all the countries are covered and the alerts are currently available in the countries like France, Thailand, UK, India, United States, Spain, Netherland, Columbia, Brazil, Austria, Argentina and Belgium. More countries are expected to be added to this list soon. The search engine will also inform the users if their trip has a COVID-19 checkpoint, like if there are any checking on the international borders. For now this feature will be launched in the US, Canada and Mexico. There will also be alerts when the user is travelling towards the COVID-19 testing centre or a medical facility.
For such alerts, Google will be making use of the data from the local, state and the federal governments for the convenience of the people to be aware of the guidelines. For now, the facility will be available for the medical facilities in the US, South Korea, Indonesia and Israel. Moreover, Google is also working on a feature that it had introduced in 2019, which helps to predict how crowded will be the trains, buses or the subway.
Photo Credits: Pixabay
