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San Antonio siblings create app allowing customers to review businesses' COVID-19 safety measures

The app was developed by two brothers who work around class schedules to make it happen.

SAN ANTONIO — A new app launched recently that helps San Antonians rate local businesses on their COVID-19 safety measures.

The Youtube page for the Co-Crit app opens on a stop-motion bunny made of food. It may look like an after-school project – and it is – but it’s also part of something much bigger.

“Co-Crit actually has two parts to it. Co- as in together and Crit as in critique, so it kind of means critiquing-together. which is the whole point of the app,” said app co-creator Elijah Whang “And Co- also stands for COVID, so we thought that was a pretty cool play on words.”

Whang is a Junior at BASIS High School, San Antonio. His brother Jason: a Senior at Brown University. They taught themselves coding in their downtime so they could develop the app which allows people to review businesses for their coronavirus safety measures.

“We kind of know the ropes, but in terms of App development, this is our first one,” said Jason.

“He actually woke up like an extra hour early every single day to work on the app,” Elijah said.

Credit: Co-Crit
The Co-Crit app is available on the iPhone app store and Google Play

Users can search for businesses in their area and rate them on several safety metrics.

“Hey, this business has hand sanitizers. Their employees wear gloves et cetera,” Jason said. “We have a list of different safety measures that they can have and the percentage of people that have seen those safety measures there.”

Jason says he hopes the app can help strike a balance between keeping people safe and helping businesses stay afloat.

“We felt that by equipping people with the necessary information so that they’re able to know how safe businesses are to visit we’d be able to not only drive in more foot traffic but also be able to help people feel safe or comfortable about certain places that they want to go visit,” he said.

The app is free to use, with ad revenue going to support Feeding America to fight food insecurity. They stress that the app will be the most effective if a lot of people download and use it to build up reviews.

“This is something that we were doing for fun that we hoped would create an impact and we’re excited to see how it’s able to help other people and businesses right now.”

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